Birthright
by Em Dash
Summary: Pyramid's dream has ended, and Trip's hometown has a new name and purpose. But when things begin to go wrong with terrible calculation, Trip and Monkey realize that freeing Pyramid's enslaved might be more complicated than simply leading them home.
1. The Storm

Zero: Scientific Method

* * *

><p>He experimented with dogs first. Not the giant, feral mechs that roamed the ruins, but real, flesh-and-bone animals that were too wild to recognize humans as anything but danger or an easy meal, depending on how many of them were in the pack. It was difficult to catch them; they were swift and filled with a sort of crazed anger that impressed him. In the end, he snared and killed a rabbit and left it dangling under a carefully poised mech rhino shell. It took two days, but a half-starved mongrel finally found the smell too tempting, and the thunderclap and ring of the shell slamming down told him that he finally had work to do.<p>

The headbands had weathered the last year without Pyramid surprisingly well. Even without a signal, they drew power from the scorching sun and waited, dormant, for someone or something to compel. He thought he'd got the basics of the programming right, but it was only him, alone in the depth of the ravine, and he wasn't so confident as to clamp it over his own skull for the preliminary tests. There was no need, with hungry dogs still roaming the wilderness.

Language was the biggest problem. First, the dog had to learn what stay meant before it could be commanded to do so. Some residual breeding gave him the proof he needed when, after three weeks of carefully correlated commands to stay and strips of rabbit hide as reward, the mutt finally caught on, and would stay in one place for nearly two minutes, wriggling in hungry anticipation.

The headband proved to fit well enough around the top of the dog's skull, tight enough to keep it from pawing it off, but not so tight as to interfere with the test itself. He kept up the training until he could be confident that the mutt would understand what it was meant to do, and could do so with a clear understanding of the consequences if it failed. The day the dog sat for ten minutes, without so much as whining, he took it out to the grassy area near the cliff face that he'd designated as the testing area.

The experiment was not exactly a success. The dog died convulsing horribly, its tongue lolled out and coated in thick pink foam. The simple command to leave the roasted squirrel he'd set out proved impossible, and the dog managed scarcely a minute before taking half a dozen steps forward. The band went off in the instant the animal's snout touched the squirrel's scorched fur, and the shock itself only lasted a second. But the death took much longer, almost comically so. By the end, he wondered if it was so violent because he'd missed something in his programming, or simply because the dog was too simple-minded and stubborn to die.

He waited for the spasms to taper off before prying the headband from the dog's skull, and held it in his hand, thinking.

Few animals large enough for the bands wandered this far into the ravine, and never any people. Each trip out meant time that could have been better spent on experiments, but it might finally be a necessary delay.

He waited for the first scavengers to scurry over and inspect the dog, prodding its flesh for signs of resistance. When the rats mouthed at the dog's soft belly and felt nothing but warmth, he turned his back on them and started home.

There wasn't any way around it: he'd have to find a person to fine-tune the programming on, and soon. Dust storms were burying Pyramid further into the past almost daily, and soon nothing in the world would help him find it again.

And once that happened, there wouldn't be a way home at all.

* * *

><p>One: The Storm<p>

* * *

><p>Trip was determined to catch those last, powerful gales turning the wind turbine before the storm truly rolled in. She timed it to the last minute, perched at the top of the tower and watching the dark clouds boil toward her.<p>

Mark waited below, his hands restless at the controls. "Now?" he called again, uneasily, and she tightened her grip on the safety rail without answering.

Three minutes of swiftly turning blades could power the town for an hour; long enough to pump up nearly a day's worth of water. The clouds carried a darkness in their underbellies that blotted out the late afternoon sun, but Trip still waited, even as the first raindrops stung her face. Mark's voice drifted up again, nearly lost in the undercurrent of the thunderclaps, but she waited just a little longer; just enough for one more person to step out of the shower, or finish charging their databand.

Trip didn't move until the lightning was visible in the valley, sawing through the clouds like cracks in tinted glass.

"Now!" she screamed, and it suddenly had to be a scream in the wind. "Hit it!"

Mark slammed the brakes, and the blades began to slow. Metal screeched in terror, but Trip couldn't cover her ears and keep her grip on the rail. The raindrops turned to sharp pinpricks that scattered on her skin.

"It's not stopping!" Mark shouted. "It's too late!"

The next blade passed by Trip, still dangerously fast this close. "Emergency release!"

Mark peered up at her, blinded by the rain. "You sure?"

Trip gauged the speed of the blades against the oncoming storm. "Do it!"

The first latch snapped open as Mark flipped the switch, and the sail furled much too fast. The entire turbine swayed, and Trip gripped the safety rail instinctively. "Next!"

Mark flipped the next switch, and the second sail shuddered, then snapped shut. Trip could see the lightning ground strikes now, bright as day. "Last one!"

Nothing happened. Trip leaned over the rail. "Mark, the last one!"

She could see him pounding at it ineffectively. "It's open! The sail is jammed!"

Trip swore and snatched the safety harness from its hook. The storm was overhead, roiling in the sky. Her fingers fumbled at the buckles. "Mark, get up here! I need you!"

"It's too late! Leave it!" Mark shouted back. When Trip ignored him, he jammed a stopper under the last lever and started the hand-over-hand climb up the rear tower.

Trip had just finished snapping her harness into place and attaching one end of the safety line when Mark's head popped up over the last railing, his hair plastered to his forehead. She shoved the other end of the line at him. "Pull me back in when I'm done, okay?"

"Done with what?" he asked.

Trip blinked rainwater out of her eyes and pointed at the rotating blade. "Fail-safe release midway down the blade. I'll jump, kick it free, and you haul me back in." She had to shout at him from mere inches, the storm was so deafening.

"Are you insane?" Mark yelled back, but Trip was done with him, and she leapt at the blade as it charged past.

The edge of the sail caught her in the side, and the air left her in one breath. She scrambled to find the handholds on the edge, but her vision filled with water, and the holds flickered and vanished in front of her. Mark was yelling something patently useless, and Trip blocked out the distant racket of his voice.

Trip's hands were slippery with rain; each time she thought she had a good hold, the metal shifted under her and she slid back. Trip shook rainwater from her face as she fought her way down the sail, stopping to hold tight as the blade made its rotation. The safety line grew taut as she hung upside-down, then slackened again as the blade righted. She bit her fingers into the hold, hard, and kicked out at the spring-loaded emergency release.

The latch didn't budge. She wedged her foot under its handle, and pulled against it with her whole weight. The mechanism stayed firmly locked, even after the sail made its fourth rotation and Trip was starting to feel nauseated panic well up in her throat. The sky burbled angrily at her.

The next time the blade started to spin upward, she screamed at a terrified Mark, who seemed poised to flee the tower. "Clip the line to the rail! Hurry!"

He stared at the end in his hand. "It's too short!"

"Wait for me to get close, then do it!" Trip pressed the release button on her harness and waited. "Count to five!"

Mark timed it just a bit early, and Trip felt the line nearly rip from her hand. She held on with dogged determination, then waited until the line had just enough slack to hook over the emergency release. As the blade pulled down, the line tightened, and the rail strained under the weight. The turbine slowed considerably, but the blade still inched forward.

"Come on!" Trip screamed at the latch, at the storm.

The tower groaned, Mark shouted, and the latch held on for dear life.

Monkey could have done this. Monkey could have coaxed the latch open with no effort at all, or ripped it from its hinges if it was too rusted. He could have torn the turbine down with his bare hands, if Trip asked him to.

The turbine made a horrible, low-pitched moan, and Trip grabbed the safety line with one hand and hauled upward. Monkey couldn't do everything. Some things she had to do herself.

In the next heartbeat, the latch finally gave way, the rail overhead strained too far and tore free, and Trip lost her hold on the sail as it snapped shut. She reached out blindly to find another handhold, but it was too late, and her fingers clamped down on nothing as she began to fall.

Even halfway up the lowest blade, Trip was still fifteen feet off the ground. She miraculously missed the base of the tower and slammed straight into the patch of drenched earth near the controls. She breathed hard, spitting rainwater at the ground, and rolled onto her side.

"Get out of the way!" Mark screamed, and she craned her neck to look up at the tower.

The mangled rail swung from the platform edge. Mark made a pointless grab for it; the rail was six feet long and more than he could hope to lift. The metal whined and twisted in the wind, and Trip felt the sort of disconnected interest that comes with watching an unavoidable disaster.

"It's going to fall!" Mark shouted. "Trip, move!"

The rail groaned loudly and snapped free. It bounced off the scaffolding and crashed into the turbine blade with an ear-piercing ring.

Trip pushed herself out of the mud and dove under the lower platform. She landed with a wet slap as the rail plowed into the ground at the base of the tower.

For a full minute, Trip huddled under the platform like a wounded animal, hugging her bruised ribs and waiting for her ears to stop ringing.

Mark's hands found her before Trip wanted them to. It was only when he tugged her wrists to guide her from the tower that she realized her elbow was too badly injured to straighten, and Mark crouched under the platform to help her out.

Dazed, she allowed him to pull her to her feet and guide her away from the damaged turbine. He caught her once as her feet slid different directions in the slick mud. With an arm wrapped around her back and his hand cupping her injured elbow, Mark led her back to the place that had been her father's house and shut the door behind them.

* * *

><p>Trip blew warm air on her fingers and wrung them in each hand in turn as Mark moved around the house as if it were his, turning up lights and starting a kettle of water boiling. She felt half-drowned and imagined rain still pelting her face, sliding down her nose and mouth and choking her senseless. Her ribs were a confused mess of pain and numbness, and she resisted the urge to press her fingers along the bone to search for fractures. Her elbow, either badly bruised or broken, kept her arm at a rigid right angle.<p>

And she'd seriously damaged the town's main wind turbine.

Mark didn't say a thing until he had a cup of warm black tea to press into her hands and a towel to drape over her shoulders. Trip nuzzled her face into the towel and was none too surprised when it was immediately bloody.

"Shouldn't we do something about that?" Mark asked at last.

Trip ignored him, but found herself prodding the gash on her cheek unconsciously.

Mark had poured himself a cup of tea as well, but he merely twisted the mug back and forth in his hand without even pretending to drink. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have let you do that. I should have..."

Trip didn't have an opinion on that, and Mark cleared his throat. "Ben is going to kill us," he said. "He warned us about cutting it too close. He always said—"

"I don't care what Ben always says," Trip said. She was exhausted; the words slurred and tumbled. "Ben wouldn't know an opportunity if it knocked him on his ass."

"Coming from someone who was ass-deep in mud a minute ago."

She stared past Mark dully for a minute longer, then forced herself to look at him. He looked pathetic, his hair in wet clumps that pressed against his pale face. Trip had to imagine she looked about the same, but bloodier.

"Go home," she said, exhausted. "I'm going to sleep for a while."

"You really need someone to look at that arm," Mark said.

"I'll just go easy on it," she said, just barely registering the horror on Mark's face. "And the bleeding will stop."

"Yeah, but..." Mark said, but trailed off when Trip's gaze slid off him again.

"I'm going to sleep for a bit," she said, "then I'm going to start figuring out how we can fix the turbine."

"It can wait for tomorrow," Mark said. "Let me get someone to look at your arm, or your face. You're a mess."

Trip finally glanced back at him. "Shouldn't you be on watch, anyway?" she said. "You're up on rotation."

Mark looked wounded. "I got Geoff to cover for me."

"If Geoff's there, it means Wren's up, too. Go take over."

"No, you need someone to—"

Trip stood. The towel slipped from her shoulders, and she and Mark could both see the patches of fresh blood. He drew back from it slightly.

"You want to be helpful?" she said, the nastiness in her voice striking and foreign. "Go tell Ben what happened so we can start fixing this mess first thing tomorrow. Relieve Geoff at the lookout tower and send Wren home so she can get something to eat." She took a deep, unsteady breath. "And I'll need a fresh charger for the next batch of dragonflies."

Mark had withered at her list, but rallied himself at the last request. "Dragonflies? We don't need _him_ just to—"

"Would you please go already?" Trip asked, and Mark had the sense to do it.

* * *

><p>She waited for the door to close after him, and to imagine the squelch of his footsteps fading away. It was barely nighttime, but the ferocity of the storm had left a sort of dangerous heaviness in the air that would keep most of the town indoors for the rest of the night. Trip stumbled toward the door and threw herself against it to slide the deadbolt into place. It was only when the rest of the world was safely locked outside that she began to breathe a little easier.<p>

She leaned in the direction of her chair at the kitchen table and let the momentum carry her there. She picked up the bloody towel, buried her wounded cheek in it, and padded blindly to her bed in the small alcove in the next room.

Trip hit the mattress only half-sensible and expected to pass out immediately, but her thoughts careened. They had to find scrap to repair the broken parts of the turbine, and the time to shape them. She had to reallocate power for the next few days to cover the basics until they could get the main turbine up and running again. That meant no hot showers or vids—strictly defense and the essentials until they could fix this mess.

Trip prodded the gash on her cheek with a fingertip, vaguely alarmed that she still couldn't feel it. She had to hope Geoff had at least one dragonfly in working condition for her to send a message to the scrapyard, or else they'd have to waste time catching and modding one from scratch.

The clock on her databand flashed at her; she estimated another half an hour until Ben got the message and could decide that his fury was worth the soaking walk to her house on the other side of the Liberty. Trip pushed her face into her pillow, not caring that it would be stained beyond repair by morning.

She wanted to sleep for a year.


	2. Where You Can Find Me

Two: Where You Can Find Me

* * *

><p>Monkey saw more and more people on the road these days. It used to only be nomads like him, crossing paths just long enough to distrust each other and move on. Once in a while, he might come across caravans—whole towns that had to pack up and leave after the slavers came by, or after a mech finally sniffed them out. He'd trade with them, offer whatever directions they thought they needed, and watch them fade into the dust along the road. He never saw the same group twice.<p>

But they were more common now, and most of them weren't even on the run. They were headed somewhere, fearless for the first time in their lives, or close enough to it not to make any difference.

Other things had changed since Pyramid went offline. What little brains the slaver mechs ever had began to deteriorate. They would capture people, but without the auto-piloted slaver ships to stow them on, they'd promptly release them again. After a few months, they slowed and stopped wherever they were. It wasn't strange to see them by the roadside, frozen between steps. People regarded them with fear and distrust at first, and a few mechs had been strung up like condemned men and set alight, but now people barely saw them as they passed.

The headbands themselves had no Pyramid signal or relay points from the slaver ships to direct them, and their hold over the enslaved was broken. Monkey's headband was a twisted, useless scrap of metal along with the thousand others they left at Pyramid.

He didn't often go back to that day, and the days immediately after it were so busy that he had no time to try. Now, Monkey spent most of his time scavenging, picking pieces out of the wreckage of the scrapyard and making himself feel useful.

Near mid-morning, the sun just barely spilled over the edges of the canyon, but it was already time to start the climb back up. He swung the bag of scrap metal his shoulder and began the climb back to the edge of the cliff, toward the small concrete building that was home for now.

He climbed steadily, reaching for each nook before he saw it. Travelers were happy to trade for good scrap metal. He traded them just enough for makeshift weapons or basic machinery. If they'd been fair and not tried to kill him when they thought he wouldn't be expecting it, Monkey pointed them toward Liberty.

When he saw them, he fed the recently freed enslaved, sometimes clothed them, and sent them the same way. One man had come within fifty feet of Monkey without seeing him, half-naked and tripping over the loose shreds of his once-shoes, his slaver headband long dead but still firmly clasped around his temples. Monkey had spent three days helping that one find his way back to sanity, then escorted him to Trip's settlement himself.

Trip was always happy to take them in, but the question in her eyes was brighter every time, and Monkey didn't have an answer for what turned a free man into a shell. There wasn't a way to explain what the headbands did, what it was like to have that severed and to be shoved back into the real world. Monkey couldn't find words for that kind of loss, and Trip simply couldn't imagine.

The last stretch of the climb up over the lip of the canyon was always the hardest. He set his mind on something beyond the edge and gave it color. Something he wanted to reach, something to make the fresh ache in his hands and feet well worth it. It never took long.

Monkey tipped himself up over the edge and climbed to his feet and into the morning sun. The temperature would swell as the day wore on, and he wanted to be back home before that happened.

That, and Trip's dragonflies always seemed to arrive before noon.

* * *

><p>Something was making an odd, rhythmic scraping noise when Trip woke. It sounded like a mech climbing a great metal tower, its claws raking over the beams until it lost purchase and slipped down again, over and over. The noise was faint, as if she were hearing it through water, but it tugged at nervous strings in her gut and she shifted uneasily.<p>

When she turned her head, the pillowcase came with it, and Trip was abruptly wide-awake and smelling blood in the air as the wound on her cheek pulled open.

Everything ached, from the top of her skull to the ankle she didn't remember twisting. She nudged her legs over the side of the bed and pushed herself upright, weighing twice as much as usual. She made it to the kitchen and dry-swallowed four painkillers before remembering that anything more than one and a half made her veins buzz for the rest of the day. Trip turned toward the front door, considered herself in the reflective surface of the refrigerator, and kept turning until she saw the bathroom.

She scrubbed as much blood out of her hair as she could with self-rationed water. Everything stuck to her skin and stank of dirt and grease. She pressed two fingers to her inflamed face, tracing the outline of the wound along her cheek. Ben would have to mend it, if she could convince him there was a point to it if he only planned to throttle her afterward. Trip dressed slowly and painfully, feeling every joint for the first time in her life, and stepped outside.

Gathered together, the town seemed like one creature with dozens of gesturing hands. Trip squinted in the sharp sunlight and tried to take in the sight of the group of them all congregated at the base of the hill, murmuring amongst themselves but sometimes asking loud questions at no one. She had meant to be up long before this part could happen, but somehow Ben had failed to wake her like she'd expected, and the day was well and truly on schedule.

She pushed her way through the crowd with what authority she could muster. They parted for her, murmured greetings, and turned back toward the turbines.

The grating noise was louder here. The damaged blade was dented badly, angled back toward the tower scaffolding and scraping along the metal posts in the breeze, then hauled back the other way by the weight of the remaining blades and starting again. The whole turbine seemed to tilt haphazardly to the left, but Trip couldn't be sure it wasn't her head doing the swaying.

It was so much worse in daylight. The rust between the fins shone in the early sun, and Trip thought of blood.

"Oh," she said to no one. "Oh, no."

Aged, careful hands were at her face before she could continue. "Trip, sweetheart, what happened to your cheek?"

"Hi, Marla," Trip said, her mouth swollen and dry. "Fell last night. Hit the stone walk."

Marla cooed nonsense and cradled Trip's face in her hands. Trip smiled, even as that hurt worse than anything else she'd done so far, and gently pulled Marla's hands away. "It's not that bad."

"Your poor face!" Marla insisted. "You tell those useless boys to do the rough stuff from now on. It's insane, you running everything. They rely on you too much."

"I'm not running everything," Trip said, then added: "Not by myself."

Marla wouldn't budge. "Close enough! You tell Neil to lend a hand every now and then. He lazes around in the lab all day, working on those poor souls he calls study—"

"I really have to go, Marla," Trip said delicately. "Would you excuse me?"

Others reached out at her as she passed, many just to touch her shoulder in support. She recognized most of them, but some were too new to the town for her to really remember their names. Half of them had the rough, permanent scars from the slavers' headbands around their foreheads, and Trip could never avoid looking at them for a brief moment before meeting the owner's eyes.

It wasn't until she got to the front of the crowd that she could hear angry voices. Rather, she heard one angry voice, and someone else's desperately trying to calm him.

Trip turned to the closest gawkers. "We'll take a look at the turbine and come up with a plan to get it fixed. Come lend a hand later if you can."

The message spread and the majority of them scattered slowly, breaking off into little groups and headed around the town to start the day in the right order. Trip took a deep breath and held it until her lungs were ready to split, then started the walk up to the turbines.

"I'm _telling_ you, we had everything under control. The rail was old, and it could have collapsed at any—"

"It didn't 'collapse,'" Ben said. "It tore right off. And if this is your idea of control, I'd hate to see the situation out of control. Do you realize our main power source is completely unusable? You realize we only have enough power to maintain the main defenses for three days?"

Trip couldn't believe how steep the climb had suddenly become. She had to stop to catch her breath, her fingers pressed into her throbbing ribs.

"We'll fix it," Mark was saying, trying to be confident but settling into a sort of pathetic, childish stoicism. "We just have to find parts to—"

"Do you know how long it took us to find enough parts for the north turbine?" Ben demanded. "Two months! Two _months_ of scavenging the scrapyards, farther than it was safe to with the slaver mechs just starting to power down. We ran into mech dogs, and scorpions, and a rhino on the western edge of the lake—"

"But you found them," Mark said eagerly. "We can do all that again. And it'll be easier, since the slaver mechs are dead."

"Don't be so sure about that," Ben said.

Trip stumbled up to them, the grass still soaked and slippery under her shoes. "We have five days," she said, horrified to hear her own voice as a surprising, alien croak.

"Jesus, Trip," Mark said in alarm. "Go back to bed."

Ben looked at her with less sympathy but no less shock. "God, look at you. You're supposed to be inspiring these people, not trying to kill yourself for a few extra minutes of electricity with some insane stunt."

That snapped her up. "How much more did we get?" Trip asked. "Go on, you're the head mechanic. You tell me how much more I bought with that insane stunt."

"I'm also head doctor, when I feel like it," Ben said, "and just looking at you, I can tell you it wasn't worth it."

Trip ground her teeth until her skull vibrated. "How much made it to the cells?"

"I haven't checked yet."

"Enough for five days, not three," Trip said for him. "The outer defenses will last five days. Eight, if we ration all other power use to bare essentials. We still have the hydraulics, and the secondary turbines. We can salvage metal from the scrapyard in one day, and reconstruct the sail in three." She tried to put confidence behind it, but Ben's eyes roamed over the broken skin on her face, the way she held her arm stiff. "We have time," she said, a little less forcefully.

"Every time you decide to do something foolish," Ben said slowly, "you insist on taking the rest of us with you."

"Hey—" Mark objected, but Trip glared him into silence.

She could feel her joints starting to seize again, and the wound in her face throbbed with her heartbeat. Ben took a deep breath, as if to rally all the patience he could, and reached out to her. "May I?"

"What first?"

"That arm first, then the rest back at the clinic."

Trip pushed up her sleeve and tried to look away from the dark bruising that spread like a stain from the elbow, coloring half of her upper arm.

For as angry as he was, Ben was remarkably careful. He placed a hand under her elbow with a feather-light touch, then slowly straightened her arm until Trip gasped and yanked it away.

"We won't know until we scan it, but I'm guessing it's a fracture," Ben said. "And that gash on your face is going to scar badly if we don't stitch it."

"Whatever you think is best," Trip said without enthusiasm. "But we need to get the turbine fixed before anything else."

"People first, metal second," Ben said. "Follow me."

* * *

><p>The clinic was really half-garage, half-infirmary. Trip thought you stood just as good a chance coming away shiny and new as any machine, so long as you didn't mind the smell of grease. There were no mechs—Ben didn't touch those. But there were pistons and rotors, centrifuges and children's playthings. There were generators that ran on fuel no one had, and lamps that were simply too ugly to exist. He kept them, and fixed them where he could.<p>

Ben pushed the privacy curtain aside for her out of courtesy, and Trip collapsed on the narrow infirmary bed.

"You can wait outside," he told Mark, who slouched nervously in the doorway. "Start finding out who'd be willing to help with the repairs. We'll need at least half a dozen people to tear down the broken sail today."

Mark opened his mouth to protest.

"Did you take the chargers to the tower like I asked?" Trip said.

Mark's mouth snapped shut again, and he scrambled out the door.

Once he was gone, Trip curled tight, twisting and looping to close off the pain until she felt like a seashell.

"That won't help," Ben said. "Come on, what other damage did you do?"

Trip wasn't shocked to hear that she had two badly bruised ribs and perhaps one broken one. Her head had taken a nasty crack, too, but it seemed all right for the time being, and her right ankle was sprained. Ben wrapped her elbow in something cool and soothing and did up a neat splint over her shoulder to keep it in place. He had no advice for her ribs or head, aside from painkillers, and the ankle would heal with time. She turned down his offer of crutches, expectedly.

Ben brought out his suture kit and Trip shut her eyes. The first stab was a dull, general pain, and the thread sliding gently through her flesh was curiously terrifying.

"You're good with computers," he said, "but jumping onto a moving wind turbine is just plain stupid."

"Did Mark tell you that?"

"He might have said something about it. No, don't touch it," Ben said, as Trip's fingers twitched toward her face. "Halfway done."

Trip gripped a kneecap in each hand as the needle worked through her raw skin. "If the sail hadn't jammed, none of this would even be a problem," Trip said.

"That sail always jams," Ben said without rancor. "But you know that."

"It might not have this time."

Ben tugged a little harder than he needed to, and Trip winced. "Sorry," he said. "Hold still."

He worked in silence for a while, re-joining the skin on Trip's cheek with delicate precision.

"You could have come to get me," he said, and dabbed a trickle of blood from her face.

"You just said you couldn't do much about the ribs or ankle or the rest of it," Trip said, her eyes shut tight. "So what's it matter?"

"Who do you think helped your father build that turbine? I know every piece of it, including the ones we welded together from photos without knowing what the hell they were for and just hoping for the best." Ben sighed. "If you're going to wait out the last minutes of a thunderstorm, you should have someone who knows how the turbine works before trying to let it kill you."

"Would you have jumped instead?" she asked pointedly.

"Hopefully, it wouldn't have come to that."

She opened her eyes just enough to see him through the blur of her lashes. "But would you have?"

"No—" he started.

"No," she said along with him, and added, "Because Graham wouldn't deserve it."

Ben hesitated at her tone. "No." He removed his hands from her face, even though the stitches were unfinished. "No one deserves it. Of course they don't."

They weren't talking about Ben and his 7-year-old son anymore. Trip squeezed her eyes shut again, so hard that she saw pinpricks of light.

The clinic was never totally silent, between the vidscreens humming and the buzz of the lights. The tiniest sounds swelled in the emptiness, an avalanche of noise that saved Trip the indignity of hearing her breath go uneven, the way it did before she started to cry.

"You know that your father drew them off so the rest of us could escape," Ben said quietly. "Graham and I are alive because of what he did. He did a lot to be proud of, Trip."

Trip kept her face angled away. "Are you done?"

"He wouldn't want—"

"I meant my face."

Ben sighed hard enough to stir the hair curled around her forehead. "Almost. Hold still." He carefully wiped her cheek with a damp tuft of cotton. "He knew what he was doing. He knew you'd find your way back, too."

Trip fought off tears, thinking of deserts, of months without rain. "Enough, okay?"

"Consider the others," Ben said. "You led them here to give them a life after Pyramid. And after a year of it, you're already throwing yourself at anything that might redeem you for some imagined failure. You think I need to hear whenever my best friend's daughter finds new and exciting ways to endanger herself?"

The metal tray rattled as Ben swapped tools. "He'd be heartbroken, Trip. You know it. We aren't machines, and you can't save every person who wanders into your field of vision. It'll kill you."

He snipped off a final bit of string from her face, and sat back. "There."

Trip took that as permission to leave. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes before investigating the bunched skin with her fingertips. "Okay," she said. "Thanks."

"Trip..." Ben said, warningly.

She stood but wouldn't meet his gaze. "I'm going to send a dragonfly to see if Monkey has any scrap we can use to repair the turbine."

Trip didn't turn to face him until her eyes felt drier, but when she did, Ben was hunched on his stool, having aged ten years in the few minutes he spent stitching her cheek. He took time to find his question. "That man—he takes care of you?"

"We take care of each other," Trip said automatically. "You already know what happened. Monkey is..." Trip lost the end to the sentence and shrugged. "He takes care of everyone."

"Good," Ben said. "I'm glad to hear that."

"Are we done here?" Trip asked, and Ben nodded. "Thanks."

"Any time," Ben said, and Trip shoved the clinic door aside and pushed into the sunlight.

* * *

><p>She found Wren sprawled, dead asleep and snoring softly, over the desk in the office beneath the lookout tower. Wren was small for her age, and ten wasn't very much to begin with. Trip draped a jacket over Wren's slight shoulders, which earned her a brief mumble of "No, it's <em>my<em> turn...I wanted to play checkers..." Trip closed the door quietly behind her.

She was still trying to pass for cool and collected when she reached the top of the tower. Geoff barely gave her a glance as she lumbered over the top rung, shocked that doing it with one arm was just as hard as she had every right to expect.

"Why are you still here?" Trip demanded. Geoff had hard red lines around his eyes, as if he'd been selling sleep. "Tell me Mark came to relieve you last night."

"Oh, he did," Geoff said. "Then he rambled for about five minutes about Trip-fell-off-the-turbine and we're-in-so-much-shit and Trip-can't-be-hurt-that-bad-but-maybe-I-should-go-back."

Sometimes Trip hated his mouth, but Geoff was usually right. "So, what, you took his shift instead of letting him stew it out up here?"

"If I left him here, would he have stayed?" Geoff said, and fixed her with a stare.

Trip hated knowing that Wren had to sleep on a hard wood table because Geoff knew the answer first. "No, he'd come right back down."

Geoff lifted the binoculars back to his eyes. "Yep."

"Did you send Wren home?"

"Yep."

Trip pressed her lips together. "You know she's asleep downstairs, right?"

"Yep."

"What happens when winter comes and you're still too interested in playing soldier to make sure Wren doesn't starve, or freeze to death?"

"She could stand to lose some weight," Geoff said.

"Oh, you little _shit_," Trip said, even though she knew he was half-joking, but not having the patience for the other half. "Get down off this tower _now_. Take your sister home, feed her and put her in a bed. With sheets and a pillow and everything, you understand?"

Geoff considered her for a long moment. At fourteen, he was nearly as tall as Trip was, and she felt every micron he grew nearer to closing that gap.

"Are you going to call Monkey?" he asked suddenly.

"Do you have the dragonflies ready for me?"

Geoff indicated the waterproof, shielded box in the corner of the tower. Something buzzed discontentedly inside it, and Trip sighed in relief. "Mark remembered to bring the chargers, incredibly," Geoff said.

"I don't know who's worse," Trip said. "You, for leaving your sister to sleep hungry downstairs, or Mark, for...being..."

"Mark," Geoff supplied.

"Shut it and go home," Trip said. "I mean it. Home. Not to the lab, not to Marla's. Go home and sleep for a change."

"Tell Monkey I said hi," Geoff said. "And tell him to bring something interesting. It's boring up here."

"I'll try to remember that when I'm asking him to help us fix the stupid wind turbine. Get out."

Geoff laughed at her attempt to swat him with her good arm and clambered down the ladder with the sort of speed that would have impressed Monkey. Which, Trip supposed, was precisely the point.

She watched Geoff exit the guardhouse at the base of the tower and lead his sister, half-asleep and stumbling, the coat still over her shoulders, back toward their house. She watched them as far as she could to make sure that Geoff didn't push his sister toward home and run off alone, but they made it as far as the gate to their section of town before vanishing.

The dragonflies couldn't feel anger, but Trip was certain they sensed imprisonment. She opened one of the lids of the case and lifted a dragonfly out, careful to avoid its sharp wings. "Hello, there," she said. "You tired already?"

The dragonfly was weak from lack of sunlight and merely buzzed at her, its lens focusing and refocusing on her face. She shushed at it and plugged it into a charger. It was faster than solar charging, and let her keep them safe until they were needed.

After five minutes, the dragonfly's wings were beating strong enough to cast a breeze around her face. Trip pinched the release at the back of its neck, and the dragonfly's metal head snapped forward to give her access to the cable port. She tapped her databand and brought up the interface she'd created just to reprogram them in moments, and lights flashed in the dragonfly's eyes.

When the programming was finished and she removed the cable, the dragonfly sat calmly on her arm, waiting.

"Begin message," Trip said, and her databand display flashed red.

"Monkey, it's me," she started after a brief pause, and imagined the sound of her voice pass through the dragonfly's microphone and into its datachip.

When she was done, Trip snapped the dragonfly's head back into place with a quick twist. She stood and pointed it in the direction of Monkey's house at the edge of the canyon. The location was set in the programming, but the dragonflies still tended to get lost if they didn't have a clear line of sight. Trip held her arm out over the watchtower wall and let the dragonfly get its bearings.

"Find Monkey for me," she whispered. The dragonfly's lens focused on her without comprehension.

"Launch," she said, louder, and the dragonfly sprang from her arm into a warm draft of air and flitted away.


	3. Up the Road

Three: Up the Road

* * *

><p>Across open sky, with a decent breeze behind it, a mech dragonfly could cover more distance in an hour than a man could cover on foot in half a day. It got a good start from the height of the watchtower where Liberty stubbornly clung to cliff sides, and mostly drifted downward for the first quarter mile.<p>

It passed over the main set of fences, then the elaborate bridge scheme, blipping quietly on the town's anti-mech system. Someone was down at the bridge controls, adjusting them after last night's storm, but the dragonfly had very specific programming and ignored him as he turned to watch it pass overhead.

The landscape was hardly lush; a few wind-worn trees stretched out to the sky, with the palest of leaves unfurled on their branches. The dragonfly took measurements of temperature, humidity and barometric pressure and stored it away. It tracked every life form it observed outside Liberty's boundaries, to cross-reference them against what it had seen before.

The route to the scrapyard was almost always completed in 46 minutes and 15 seconds. The dragonflies passed this knowledge back to Trip's databand, and through it, to each other, and they made a point to time it as such. There was no competition or pride—just the simple, mechanical satisfaction of being precise.

Most of the land that passed by was empty roadway, sometimes interrupted with brush or smatterings of saplings. The real greenery lay just to the south, where less land had been razed for the mech factories. There were cities that way, just out of the dragonfly's sensor range and largely reclaimed by the earth. On a full charge, the dragonflies might pick up a stray radio signal from time to time, but for the most part, there was only silence.

The canyon was new, relatively speaking. The dragonfly could detect freshly exposed earth in its fissures, where the ground had been torn by an earthquake or an explosion. It became a burial ground for discarded mechs and their associated scrap, far enough from the front lines to keep them from the enemy's hands. The canyon was really a scar on the landscape, deep enough to swallow light.

At the edge of the canyon, where a small mountain of scrap hadn't made it over the edge, and ten-foot razor fencing created a makeshift perimeter, a square concrete building that could only be considered a guardhouse tripped the dragonfly's programming.

The dragonfly marked the building on its trajectory and began its descent.

Flying was easy. Landing, which was really just carefully planned falling, was trickier.

* * *

><p>"Heave!"<p>

The rope grew taut as a dozen hands yanked on the main pulley line. The damaged blade lifted, and Ben and a few others climbed up to disconnect it from the spoke.

"Heave!"

Trip would have been in the middle of it, but Ben had expressly forbidden any further climbing, running or hoisting. She wanted to try, at least, with the one good arm, but the men had laughed good-naturedly and set her aside, like a child who wanted to race with the older kids, and in her party shoes.

"Heave!" Ben yelled again, his hands cupped around his mouth.

"_Heave_, Carl, not 'sleepwalk'! What good are you?"

"Well, _fuck_ you too, Nash. At least I'm pulling. What are you trying to do, sabotage us for shits and giggles?"

"Yeah, that's why I'm ankle-deep in this crap. For _shits_. Why don't you let go and let the real men take care of this?"

"If by _real men_, you mean you, we're so fucked we're gonna be sore for a week."

Trip had never, ever been so tired.

"One more," Ben shouted. "Come on!"

The men rallied and pulled hard, and the blade swung free. Trip watched as the secondary line guided the damaged blade into the grassy area in front of the turbine. "Easy!" someone shouted unnecessarily.

Ben climbed down the tower, wrenches and ratchets fanned out from his belt. His feet hit ground when the blade did, and Trip finally left her perch on the platform to see the damage close up.

It was no better or worse than she'd seen from a distance that morning. The fins were either bent out or crumpled in, depending on where the rail had struck. She traced the metal edge with a fingertip, breaking the skin on the first swipe. The men swore appreciatively at the damage. "Some storm," someone said.

"Some storm," Trip echoed dully.

"Let's peel this apart and see what we can salvage," Ben said. "Come on, haul ass."

The men started to pry the outer casing from the spine, and Trip fingered the edges of her splint nervously.

"No crowbars for you," Ben said. "Don't even think about it."

Trip hadn't recovered enough energy to argue, so she turned away from him and watched the turbine fins come apart.

"Oh, shit!" Geoff said behind her. "Was it a lightning strike? Do you think we had an actual funnel cloud touch down? Did it throw debris or something at the turbine?"

He had changed clothes, but it hadn't been three hours since Trip sent him home, and he still had the hunted look of someone who'd been dodging sleep for too long. He spoke unnaturally fast, and poor Wren leaned against his side, pillow creases still on her cheek.

"It's our livelihood in pieces," Ben said. "You can stop sounding so excited about it. And you should be sleeping, after a double shift."

"And watch your language," Trip added. "At least in front of Wren."

"She already talks worse than I do," Geoff said. "Right, Wren?"

Wren, his ill-fitting shadow, nodded and watched with big eyes as the men tore the blade apart.

"Yeah, she curses like a sailor," Trip said. "Wren, sweetie, do you want to go get something to eat? I think I can smell Marla making cinnamon buns."

"No, thank you," Wren said mechanically, and gripped Geoff's hand.

"You sure? They're really good."

Wren ignored her completely, her face buried in Geoff's shirt.

"Ben, c'mere!" someone at the broken turbine shouted. "Is this trash or what?"

The group of them was setting pieces of the sails aside into piles of what could be salvaged and what was destined for scrapping. Ben took the proffered shred of metal and turned it over in his hand. "Huh."

It was a thin cylinder, thicker than wire but not by much. There was a place near one end where the metal made a neat right-angle and ended in what looked like a rudimentary handle. The other end was mangled beyond recognition.

"Where did you find this?" Ben asked, and the men murmured that they didn't know, it all looked the same anyway.

He handed it to Trip. "You recognize this?"

"No. Maybe it was already out here?"

"Can I see?" Geoff grabbed it out of her hand. "It's not part of the turbine?"

"It could be," Ben said. "It could be anything. Do you know what it is?"

"Nope."

"Maybe that's why the sail was jamming," Trip said. "We didn't have to pull it in too often, but it jammed when we did."

"Old machinery," Ben said. "Everything we make is old as soon as we build it."

Trip helped them look for other unexpected pieces until they shooed her away, citing her arm. She stuck close, watching them pry the good metal from the bad, until she saw the scuff marks from her shoes on the emergency release latch and decided to find somewhere else to be.

"Council meeting at seven," Ben said over his shoulder.

She turned back to him. "Oh...yeah."

"Definitely a good idea to have one after this." He was careful not to imply that he'd called one without her consent, but Trip sensed the men picking up on it anyway.

"Yes," she said, louder. "Is there anyone who hasn't been told yet?"

"I saw Marla and Rose earlier today, and most of the others. It's really just Mark and Neil."

"Thanks, I'll get them," Trip said.

"Take Wren," Geoff said. "I want to take a look at the turbine before they fix it."

"What? Why?" Wren clung savagely to his arm.

Geoff shook her off his sleeve. "Off, okay? Go bother Trip for a while."

Wren stepped back and Geoff practically ran to the gutted turbine blade, the piece of metal still in his hand. Wren's gaze followed after him with faint desperation, then focused on Trip reluctantly.

"Mark and Neil, then cinnamon buns?" Trip asked, and Wren nodded. "Do you know where Mark is?"

"At the bridges," Wren said quietly.

* * *

><p>Monkey could always hear the dragonflies long before he saw them. They had the unnatural, metallic whine that all mechs shared, but octaves higher than the predators. The dragonflies' noises were the gears-and-wires version of a hummingbird's wings thrumming the air, with the addition of the lens readjusting periodically. It was unnerving, unless you knew what you were listening to.<p>

Monkey had just wheeled his bike outside to make some adjustments when the dragonfly alighted on the seat.

He ignored it for a moment. He'd just got the handlebars tilted back the way he wanted them, but it was hard getting them to stay there.

The dragonfly buzzed impatiently, like an alarm clock he'd forgotten to silence.

"Fine," he said. "Play message."

Hearing Trip's voice over the small speaker in the dragonfly's belly had been so strange at first, Monkey would keep peering over his shoulder to see if she had snuck up behind him. As the months passed and he listened to dozens of her messages, he learned to distinguish the parts of her voice that changed in the recording, things that made her sound less human and more mech. That didn't make him feel a lot better, but at least he could listen to the dragonflies without pounding them flat in surprise.

"Monkey, it's me," the dragonfly said, and Monkey snorted.

"I bet you saw the storm last night. It hit us pretty hard and, uh, we had something of an accident with the main turbine."

There was a noticeable pause in the recording, too long to be a glitch, and Monkey glanced at the dragonfly.

"Okay, it's more like...I completely screwed up," Trip continued. "We left the sails open way too long, and one of them broke. It's dented. Can't furl or unfurl it. We need to replace it somehow."

Monkey looked at the dragonfly for explanation, but it didn't know any more than he did, and merely kept playing.

"Ben's ready to kill us, but we need to get him the materials he needs to rebuild it. We could use your help."

"And you want me to bring..." Monkey guessed.

"Could you bring what you have so we can get started?" Trip's mech-voice asked. "You remember the turbine sails, right? What they look like? Send the dragonfly back if it has enough power, if you don't."

The dragonfly twittered, flicking its wings to keep balanced. "I'm sorry," Trip said. "I'm sorry to ask you to do this, but I've been meaning to come by to see you anyway. So maybe it's some kind of good timing."

Monkey reached out to the dragonfly, and it climbed up on his hand with its spindly metal legs. "Anyway, I have to go help assess the damage and...fix this, I guess. See you soon. Be safe."

"Be safe," Monkey echoed back at the dragonfly, and the recording clicked off.

He walked back into the house and tossed the dragonfly into the bin where he kept the rest of Trip's messengers. Their batteries were rarely good for more than a one-way trip. He didn't tell her, because he never had a message to send in reply. When he'd gathered about a dozen of them, he'd pack them all up and return them to Liberty for Trip to reuse. She rarely came to visit him here, but he could hardly blame her. The trek was hard on foot, and his makeshift home was all concrete and metal and testosterone, and Trip would smile indulgently at everything until she could find an excuse to bolt. He didn't really mind visiting her instead. Liberty had better food, anyway.

He tried to picture the turbine sails. They were too big for most of what he kept on hand, but he could make a quick run down into the canyon for some base materials to get started. He could think of a few scorpion tails that would make good fins, and a rhino shell that would take care of the new spine.

Monkey ignored the sunburn already starting to boil up under the skin on his shoulders and hoisted the folded tarp from his workbench into his bag. He could make it to Liberty by early afternoon if he hurried, and he meant to.

* * *

><p>There were two versions of the town for Trip. She and Wren took their time in passing through it, and their leisure gave Trip the chance to remember each step twice: once as the town as it had been when it was her father's, and once for now, when it was hers. There were so few of the original inhabitants that the memories were almost exclusively hers, but Trip could still see the dead out of the corner of her eye, or standing in doorways only to vanish into shadows when she blinked. She could smell things in the dirt they kicked up, scents of bread, or trampled flowers. Every inch of the town was fit to burst with things that were no longer there, and Trip couldn't help but feel a little dizzy.<p>

They navigated the complex gate system that divided the town into sections, meant to delay would-be attackers, if they made it past the main defenses. The gates hadn't exactly proven themselves a year ago, but just maintaining them made the others feel better. Even with the Pyramid mechs inactive, there were still human raiders and the occasional slavers, and any additional defenses were welcome.

"Oh!" Wren called out once, and pointed at the sky. It was a bird, just a dark pinpoint in the sky, and Trip shielded her eyes. "It's a hawk, or a falcon," she said. "I can't remember the last time I saw a real bird this close to town."

Wren hugged Trip's hand tight in ecstasy. "A falcon," she said, and Trip squeezed her hand back.

They passed Neil's lab on the way, and Trip decided to stop there first. The lab had been an underground storeroom ages ago, but Neil had claimed it and almost never came back out. Some days Trip wondered if he ate, or remembered spoken language.

Wren refused to go in for fear of missing the falcon if it came back. She plopped in the grass at the front of the building, scarcely six inches from the door, but utterly refused to set foot into so much as the entryway. Trip promised to be back in a minute and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before letting go.

The front door was unlocked, and a series of dim bulbs lit the narrow set of stairs that led down. The lab itself was underground, which was blessedly cool in the brutal days of late summer, but bitterly cold the rest of the year. At the bottom of the stairs, the lab pulsed with fluorescent light, and Trip felt her way along the wall as she descended. "Neil?"

He wasn't at his terminal, or the first set of end-to-end tables covered in beakers and assorted glass jars and who knew what else. Trip was careful as always not to touch anything. She counted a dozen beakers, bottles and tubes filled with different levels of a mucus-like material, and she shivered.

"Neil?" she called again. "Are you down here?"

Somewhere half-smothered under the stench of formaldehyde and disinfectant, Trip could smell cinnamon buns. Her stomach grumbled in bewilderment.

"Neil, it's Trip! Where are you?"

The door to the back room swung open, and Neil stepped out, looking interrupted and willing to let her know. "_What?_"

"Jeez, you scared me," Trip said, although she wasn't sure why. "What are you doing back there?"

Neil shut the door carefully behind him and latched it. "Experiments."

"Can I see?" Trip asked, but she only meant to be polite.

To her relief, Neil shook his head. "You wouldn't want to. I'm working on rabbits this month."

"I— Wait, rabbits...?"

"Well, their relative resistance to bloodborne pathogens," Neil said, then bit his tongue.

"You're infecting rabbits?" Trip sounded out. "Intentionally? You're killing them?"

"The mortality rate is only 40% so far," he said. "And it's better than testing on people."

He stepped into the main part of the lab, where she could see him without squinting. There wasn't much to him, except that he was pale, and his speech was just a half-second off-kilter, as if he never quite found the rhythm of talking. Trip reasoned that was what happened when you spent all your time underground, watching animals die.

"Did you need something? I'm in the midd—ooh," he said, catching sight of her face. "Let me see."

He was wearing thin plastic gloves that looked like balloon skins over both hands. Trip made sure he peeled them off before letting him touch her. He gripped her chin with forefinger and thumb and angled her face this way and that. "Ow, it doesn't move that way," she said once, and Neil muttered an apology. "Checking Ben's work?"

"Yeah," Neil said. "It's deep. You don't see many flesh wounds like that around here—well, aside from when Quinn lost a finger that time. Do you remember—"

"No," Trip said quickly, even though she did. "Is it going to scar?"

"Probably," Neil said without empathy. "You didn't have it treated right away. The epithelialization started before you had it stitched. I'd say you waited at least ten hours."

Trip pulled her chin out of his hands. "If you say so."

Neil continued to stare. "I think I have something that could reduce the swelling, if you wanted."

"No, no thanks," Trip said. "I'll take my chances. Thank you. Ben said it would be okay."

"Ben has no appreciation for the art of it," Neil grumbled. "It's all patchwork to him."

Trip remembered this argument. "Yeah, well, he'll take you back on your apprenticeship at any time. We could use another doctor around here."

"What, the vegetables need another doctor?" Neil said. "They need more than that."

"Don't call them that!" Trip hissed, although there was no way they could have been overheard. "They're people. And they've been through hell."

No one in Liberty used that word, at least not in public, where more than half the population was formerly enslaved. The freelifer movement might have been gaining some momentum elsewhere, but not here, not in Liberty.

Neil blinked at her in surprise, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, right. I forgot your boyfriend was one."

"Monkey wasn't— I mean, he's not my boyfriend, first, and he isn't a _vegetable_, second. None of the enslaved were. Are."

"Yeah, sure, sorry," Neil said, but came just shy of sounding like he really was. "Everyone called them that where Gram and I are from."

"Marla never, ever calls them that," Trip said. "Never."

"Then everyone except Gram," Neil amended.

"Then you two were right to leave," Trip said, and Neil had nothing to say to that.

He stepped away from her. "Did you want something?"

"I...yeah, hang on." The stench of chemicals in the lab had kickstarted the throbbing in her head, and for a second, Trip couldn't recall what she was doing there at all. "It's about...oh, the turbine. We're having a council meeting at seven tonight."

"What about the turbine?" Neil asked.

Trip made a helpless gesture with both hands and turned to leave. "Check in with your gram before you come, then, so she can catch you up. My head hurts."

"I probably have something for that," Neil called after her, but Trip had started to gag on the thick, drugged air, and she waved her hand at him and hurried outside.

She grabbed Wren's hand as she stepped out the doorway. "To the bridges," she said, and dragged the girl behind her.

* * *

><p>Monkey liked the open road. There were the giant pictures on stilts every few miles, photos of happy people advertising things he couldn't comprehend. Every now and then, he saw a mile countdown to long-dead cities. Most places where people gathered rarely got bigger than Trip's settlement. Anything more than that attracted Pyramid's attention, at least until recently.<p>

Monkey passed a Pyramid mech on the road, smack in the middle of the lane. It was mid-animation, its blades stretched out to some would-be slave, who was probably astonished to be alive and free when the mech lost power. Monkey would have come closer to it, but the sidecar was full of metal shells for Trip's new turbine sails, and he had to resist the urge to knock the mech over on his way by.

He passed a small caravan, too, but they must have known exactly where they were going or didn't trust hailing him, because they huddled to the side of the road as he roared by. They looked scrawny but otherwise good, and they were headed in the right direction if they were looking for civilization.

The sun was just starting to dip toward the horizon, and Monkey laid on the gas.

* * *

><p>One of the bridges had shifted out of alignment when a tree was uprooted and fell against it during the storm. Mark was recalibrating the system when Trip and Wren arrived.<p>

"Mark, meeting tonight at seven," Trip said breathlessly, her lungs screaming from the walk. The painkillers were staring to wear off, all four of them. They left a numbness in her head and a waking grogginess that made her feel like she was running through a thick fog. She tilted her head as if to shake water from her ear, then she saw the bridges. "Oh. I didn't know. Why didn't you come get us? This seems bad."

Mark straightened quickly. "It's not, it's not. One bridge shifted, so I'm moving the others to match."

Wren released Trip's hand and began exploring, using her skinny legs to propel her up a tree to see if there was a bird's nest there.

"You're moving the others?" Trip asked. "That's one way of doing it. You need any help?"

"No, I've got—"

"Wren, get down, please!" Trip called out, and Wren peered out from the branches but otherwise ignored her. Trip turned back to Mark. "Sorry. What?"

Mark wiped his greasy hands on a towel and shrugged. "I've got it. It's not that bad. How are you feeling?"

"Painkillers and condescension everywhere," Trip said, and grimaced. "I'll live."

"At least you're in better spirits," Mark said. "That's always good to see."

"Yeah. I'll be in even better spirits once we get the turbine back up and working. He should be here soon."

Mark's tone went dead. "Oh. You called him?"

"Yeah, he should be here any second. I'm hoping he has enough for us to get started, otherwise we'll be without hot water in a few days, and everyone is going to kill me."

"No one knows it was your fault..." Mark started, then bit his tongue as Trip turned to look at him. "I mean, no one knows...we were there...during the storm... Most of them think it was just the turbine's fault, so...you know..."

"Mark?"

"What?"

"Shut up, please."

Wren squealed in excitement, and Trip looked up. "Did you find a nest?"

Wren was looking down the path that led out of the settlement, but didn't bother to explain, and Trip let her be.

Mark went back to work on the bridge controls. "This is pretty much done anyway. Did you, um,"—he paused to clear his throat—"have lunch yet? Or dinner?"

"No. Wren and I were going to steal something from Marla, though. You hungry?"

"As a matter of fact—" Mark started, but Wren scrambled down the tree and back to Trip.

"What's up, sweetie?" Trip asked and ruffled her wild hair. "What're you grinning about?"

The smile tugged Wren's whole face wider. "Monkey's here."

She pointed down the bridges, but Trip had already pulled her hand from Wren's head and was running as fast as her twisted ankle would let her.

* * *

><p>There was no point to the bridges. The mechs didn't care for "human intelligence"—they flew over in their slaver ships and dropped exactly where they wanted. As far as Monkey could tell, the bridges existed to torment him. They weren't like the mossed-over buildings or towers he could climb with his bare hands. These were bewildering, mech-like contraptions that annoyed him for no damn reason. They were sentient, for all he knew, and they hated him.<p>

"Hey!" Monkey called up. "What's-your-face! Or Geoff! Answer the fucking door!"

Only his voice boomed back at him, and Monkey eased a kink out of his back as he waited. The drive was harder after a climb into the canyon, and even worse after two. Monkey rounded his hands around his mouth and bellowed at Liberty in general. "Somebody get your ass down here for your new turbine!"

"Coming!"

It was Trip's voice, high and excited, and Monkey watched her run down the stairs two at a time. "Hang on," she called. "I've got the controls."

Something was off. Even from the other side of the divide, there was something about her arm, and the way she carried herself. "You all right?" Monkey asked.

"Yeah, fine. Hang on, hang on."

It didn't look like fine. Trip's arm was bound in a white triangle, and she took longer than usual to wrangle the bridge controls. He thought he saw her shift unexpectedly from one foot to the other, and sway back.

"Where is everyone?" he shouted.

"At the turbine. Hang on a second!"

Monkey left the spoils of the scrapyard at the end of the bridge. He waited with growing impatience for the bridges to join and to see him across.

"Don't make me jump!"

"Two seconds!"

His half of the bridge creaked to life and rose to meet the other side. Monkey plodded up them deliberately, thinking they seemed less steady than usual.

"Monkey," Trip said, and his name was a sigh of relief.

When he came up over the crest and saw her, Monkey stopped dead. Trip's cheek was a swollen mess, an ugly band of stitches covering half of the left side of her face. Her arm was in a splint, and she held everything gingerly, as if the mere force of gravity were slowly draining her.

"You tell me who did that," Monkey said.

"What?"

"Because I am going to kill him."

Trip gave him an amused look. "No one did this." She paused, and added, "Well, I guess I did. You can snap my neck if it'll make you feel better."

Monkey took in the sight of her for another moment. She had deep bruises around her collarbone and arms that would take weeks to fade. Her hair looked like something was stockpiling knots in it, and her smile was lopsided and wrong.

He walked over and stopped just shy of her. Trip gazed up at him, suddenly smaller.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"No, I'm pretty medicated."

"How medicated, exactly?"

She pretended to take a good look at him. "Did you grow an extra head?"

"I don't think so," Monkey said.

Trip kept smiling, though it strained at the edges and her eyes shone with drug-stunted pain.

He reached out. "Can I?"

Trip tipped her face toward him. Carefully, he cradled her cheek in his hand and ran his thumb over the rough edge of the stitches, so strange against the rest of her. Her breathing had an unevenness to it that passed through Monkey's hand on her skin.

"Hey," he said quietly.

Trip pressed her cheek into his palm. "Hey."

They stood perfectly still, delaying the moment they'd head into town. Familiar, for just this moment, and safe.

Monkey remembered the last time they came this way, with Pyramid's enslaved trampling over their footprints, following Trip like living gospel. Trip shut her eyes in exhaustion, and Monkey felt the weight of it in her. Liberty could wait, just a few breaths more.

"This is boring," Wren said from behind them. "I thought we were getting cinnamon buns."


	4. Rider

Four: Rider

* * *

><p>It always seemed to surprise people how quickly children warmed up to Monkey. He was almost too big to be human to them, and must have seemed more like something to climb or play on, covered in tattoos that looked like the kind of doodles they would have done themselves, if they'd been allowed. Monkey's taciturn nature triggered some sort of reactive openness in the shiest of them, and Trip never got tired of seeing it.<p>

Wren must have worked daily to keep so many things wound up tight in her small frame. They must have swirled up in her like water seeking escape from a dam, or wild animals within sight of freedom but barred from it. Monkey's presence didn't quite release the floodgates, but after the second cinnamon bun, Wren was speaking in complete sentences without prompting; and by the third, she was the closest to talkative she'd ever get.

Monkey sat in silence that was part careful attention, part bewilderment, as Wren told him about the falcon, about the broken turbine, about the time her brother cracked his face on the watchtower stairs when he slipped one night but was too proud to tell anyone where he got his black eye. She kicked her legs under her chair the entire time, as if there was simply too much energy to release all at once, and through just one outlet.

Trip sat at the other side of Marla's heavy oak table and munched on long-cooled pastries but didn't dare to interrupt. Marla moved around her kitchen in a small circuit from the oven to the sink, to the table to join them for a quick sip of tea, then back up to check on the oven again. She called it nervous feet, but having Monkey in her house made her a little uneasy, but only because he seemed too large to comfortably enjoy her hospitality.

Monkey's gaze sought Trip out every now and then, and she would smile at him.

"Did he bring enough for the turbine?" Marla asked, low enough to let Wren keep talking across the table.

Trip hummed. "Enough for the main parts, anyway. There are some custom pieces Ben probably knows we need, but the bulk of it is here."

"That's good to hear," Marla said.

Trip crammed the last of a cinnamon bun into her mouth, the syrup dark and sticky all over her fingers, and tuned back into Wren's monologue.

"—said it was only a rock," Wren was saying. "But it was a dog."

"A dog?" Trip asked in surprise. "A mech one, or...?"

Wren gave her a disapproving look, but Trip was undeterred. "Was it a real dog? Where?"

Wren pressed her mouth shut with calculated stubbornness.

"Out there?" Monkey asked. "From the watchtower?"

She nodded. "Geoff said it wasn't, but it _was_. It was a dog. I saw it from the tower. It sat down and didn't get back up." She twisted Marla's carefully embroidered napkin around a finger. "It was gone the next day. No one believed me."

"It could have been anything," Trip said. "We don't see that many dogs around here."

"It could have been a dog, though," she added, as Wren's face went pinched and unhappy. "I mean, it could have gotten back up when it was done with its nap and gone home, right?"

Wren ignored her.

Monkey gave Trip a slow look she couldn't identify, and she drained the last of her cup of tea to avoid meeting his eyes.

"Well, not too long until the council meeting," Marla said. "Wren, did you want to stay here?"

Wren shook her head and prodded the crumbs on her plate, moving them from one side to the other. "Geoff's at the turbine."

"We'll drop you off on our way to the meeting, then," Marla said. "Did you want to take some cinnamon buns for him?"

Wren nodded and stood from the table to help Marla wrap them up.

Monkey leaned forward on his chair, toward Trip, while Marla and Wren murmured over the basket of pastries. "What happened last night?"

"I told you," Trip said. "I fell."

"That was stupid," Monkey said, but he said it in a way that made it sound like she'd thrown him from the turbine, instead. "Why didn't you get the bridge kid to do it?"

"Who, Mark?" Trip asked. "I was already up there, and I'm faster than he is. And you know he's my age, right? Mark's not a kid."

"You're still calling him that?" Monkey looked past her shoulder, trying to pull something from memory. "He's not the real Mark, right? The real bridge kid died here."

Every now and then, she completely forgot. "Oh. Oh, well, it's what we all called him at first, and it just kind of stuck. We called him Mark for so long, and he started handling the bridges, too, so it's his name now."

"And he let you do that?"

"Well, you let strangers name you," she said softly.

"That's only because I didn't have a name to begin with," Monkey said, but he dropped it.

Someone cleared her throat delicately. "Are we ready?" Marla asked, and they got up wordlessly from her table.

* * *

><p>The council meetings were never a formal affair. They held them in the war room, just to make use of it, although the talk rarely got more serious than how to establish more regular communications with nearby settlements. The council itself was made up of whoever wanted to join, if they were old enough. There were eleven of them on most days, half former enslaved, and the rest new settlers. Ben and Trip were the only original citizens.<p>

They arrived early, but Mark and Ben were already there, hunched over the table in the center of the room and pointing out parts of the turbine they could replace with the pieces Monkey brought. Ben's son, Graham, hung over the arm of his father's chair. Ben would ruffle his hair from time to time, or play-knock him off the chair, and Graham giggled quietly.

Trip sat next to Ben, who nodded briefly at them and went back to sketching out the replacement sail. Mark gave Trip a strained smile and pointedly ignored Monkey.

Monkey stood in the corner, his arms crossed over his chest as if daring anyone to offer him a chair. Graham shot him an exploratory look, but stayed with his father.

"It should be enough for the spine and most of the sails," Ben said. "The shells were a good find. We just need some of the finer parts to build this latticework."

Mark made a few marks in his notebook. "I don't think I have any spare parts from the bridges. I used a lot of the stockpile after the storm."

"No, we need to scavenge the rest. The Rider factory is close."

Mark shuddered. "It's a ghost town. The last settlement abandoned it years ago."

"It's safe enough."

Monkey cleared his throat. "Caravans come through there sometimes. They say there's nothing. Just dead mechs."

Ben looked at him. "Feel like coming?"

"Sure."

For a moment, Trip thought Mark was going to speak up and offer to help, but he clamped his mouth shut and went back to his list.

The others filed in until every seat in at the table was taken, save Neil's.

"He'll be along," Marla said, as an apology for him. "He's working on something for Ben, I think."

"Sedatives," Ben said. "My numbers were off this month, and I'm running low."

"Again?" a woman asked, nastily.

Ben visibly summoned patience and turned to her. "When did this last happen, Rose?"

"Two months ago, I asked for sleeping aids, and you said you were completely out."

"That's why I started keeping track of the numbers."

"But the numbers are _wrong_."

Rose was in her mid-forties but looked older, as the enslaved tended to. Around the scars from the slaver band, her hair was streaked with metal-gray that couldn't decide if it wanted to go back to her dark brown or carry on to white. Her face was pinched and angry, as it seemed to be even when she wasn't starting a quarrel. She stared at Ben with hard, narrowed eyes. Ben didn't blink, but Graham retreated from the table and went to stand under the safety of Monkey's shadow.

"I'm sorry," Ben said, opting for diplomacy. "I'll try to be more vigilant in the future. You're welcome to help me catalog them, of course. We could always use an extra set—"

"No, forget it," Rose snarled, and curled back into her chair. "Just pay closer attention."

There was a moment of brittle, uneasy silence until Marla tapped her fingernails on the table. "Well, now that that's settled, what's first on the agenda?"

The turbine was first, of course, and they discussed power rationing at length. The storm had only been last night, but they'd run through more power than expected and were down to three and a half days of backup power in the cells, despite Trip's calculations.

"We got most of the parts we need," Ben said. "Monkey was kind enough to bring them from the canyon this afternoon. We're outlining the plans now to get the turbine back up and functional."

"How much time are we looking at?" someone asked.

"If we start shaping them this evening, they'll be ready to attach by tomorrow afternoon," Trip said. "But we need some smaller scraps from Rider."

The group murmured low. "It's not that far," Mark said. "A few miles."

"I'll be leaving first thing in the morning," Ben said. "And Monkey has offered to help."

"And me," Trip said. "I'm going."

"You don't have to," Ben said; Monkey shook his head behind him.

"You did just finish saying how safe it was."

"It's not a matter of safety," Ben said. "You can't really help us carry anything with your arm in a sling."

Trip had to concede that. "Well, you'll still need someone to scan for you. Can't we pile the scrap on Monkey's bike?"

Monkey shrugged, embarrassed. "No good road between here and Rider."

She was reaching, and she knew it, but they weren't going to leave her in Liberty, watching for them to reappear on the horizon while she sat and waited. "What about Geoff?" she asked. "He'd love to go, and I could keep an eye on him."

Graham stepped out of the shadows. "Me, too."

"No, kiddo, we'll be okay," Ben said. "You can stay here."

"Wren told me about the dog," he said, with a child's natural deafness. "I want to see it."

"The dog?" Rose asked. "What dog?"

"She saw it from the tower," Graham said. "She said it was brown. I want to see the dog."

"Graham, the dog's gone," Trip said. "Wren said so herself."

Graham gazed across the table at her, not liking that answer, then looked up at his father.

Ben sighed. "You sure?"

Graham nodded

"Okay," Ben said, "but you promise to listen to me, whatever I say. You promise?"

"Promise."

Rose pressed her mouth shut in disapproval, but didn't have anything real to add.

"What else?" Mark said. "Anything else to discuss?"

He had barely finished asking when Rose leaned forward again. "We need to talk about the new arrivals."

Ben started rolling up the turbine plans. "We might have to leave that for the next meeting."

"No." Rose gripped the edge of the table with her fingertips. "It's only going to get worse. They're torn to pieces when they get here. They're barely human, after what happened, and they aren't any better after months." Her eyes shone out from her band-scarred face. "And I don't see anyone doing anything about it."

"What are you talking about?" Trip asked, honestly bewildered. "We give them food and clothes, and homes. We take care of everyone who comes."

Rose looked her up and down, her mouth drawn tight by some measurement Trip was failing. "You think it's easy?"

"No, I never said that."

"You wouldn't have any idea. You _wouldn't_." Rose's voice rose slightly as she talked, and Trip found herself leaning away. "What would you even know about it? I see them. I see them suffering, but do you?"

"We're not a bunch of freelifers," Mark said, of all people. "We're helping, aren't we?"

"How very generous," Rose said, but the sarcasm practically spilled out of her. "Free for life, and taking in the enslaved out of the kindness of your heart."

"That kindness," Monkey said, cold fury under his tone, "gave you a place to live, and a future. And she's sitting right next to you."

Trip shifted in surprise, and even Mark looked over his shoulder at Monkey.

"It's not enough," Rose said. "They need _help_."

"We know there are...complications...with the recently enslaved," Ben said. "I've been in communication with Lee, the doctor over in Granville. He's seeing the same thing, and they've had some progress. I'll be going over it with Neil as soon as the turbine is repaired."

Rose snorted. "What are you doing about it _now_?" She turned to Trip. "How are you going to take care of this, exactly? Come on. You must have had some plan."

Trip opened and closed her mouth noiselessly. There hadn't been a plan. There never was. "I don't—"

"Come on," Rose said. "How are you going to help them?"

"I don't know," Trip admitted, and Rose turned from her.

"And _you_," she said. "What are you even doing here? Haven't you done enough?"

For a crazy moment, Trip thought that Rose was pointing at Graham, but her finger stabbed past him at Monkey.

Monkey stood straighter. "What?"

"That's enough, Rose," Marla said gently. "It's not his fault. Or Trip's."

"I don't blame Trip," Rose said. "She couldn't have known better. She was only following _him_."

Monkey started forward to do who knew what, but Ben stood and everyone looked to him. "I think that's enough for now. We have to prepare for the trip to Rider tomorrow morning, so we'll need to get some rest early. Trip, Monkey, we'll meet at the bridges in the morning. Graham, go on home—Marla will take you."

Muttering, the group stood and gathered their things. Within a minute, Trip, Ben and Monkey were alone with the humming vidscreens.

"What was that about?" Monkey said.

"Do you really think there's something wrong with the enslaved?" Trip asked.

"Hard to say," Ben said, but Monkey just looked at her.

Trip rubbed her elbow gingerly. "This, on top of everything else..."

"What was her problem?" Monkey asked. "That woman?"

"Nothing," Ben said. "Don't worry about Rose."

"No, what's her deal?" Monkey insisted.

It was so hard to piece anything about those days together, but Trip remembered the girl who collapsed partway across the desert. She remembered Rose, too recently addled by the slaver band to make sense of it. The wordless, animalistic screaming only started when they left the girl behind, buried as deep as they could manage in the shifting sand.

Trip tried to find the right words to put that scene together, but failed. "She...lost a daughter on the way here. After Pyramid. Do you remember her?"

Monkey scowled faintly. "A girl? She was, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Fourteen. Heather, I think," Ben said. "She died in the desert."

"She was weak when we left," Trip said softly. "I know Rose would never forget, but to say it was Monkey's fault..."

"They're going to credit you for everything that goes right and blame you for everything that goes wrong," Ben said. "The sooner you learn to expect that, the better."

* * *

><p>Geoff was more excited for the trip to Rider than he was willing to let on. He slouched his way across the bridges, carrying a knapsack of the day's supplies with a scowl plastered on his face, but Trip caught him grinning when he thought no one was looking. Wren followed after him as far as the last bridge, then stood with Mark to wave them off. Monkey and Trip went first, followed by Graham and Ben, with Geoff bringing up the rear, pretending to sulk.<p>

A long time ago, Rider had been a real city with a proper name. Liberty knew it as a good scrapyard, mostly because of its proximity. They didn't know its real name, but the statue in the town square was of an enormous man on an equally impossible horse. The Stone Rider at first—then, simply, Rider.

It was only a few miles off, but there were plenty of things between Liberty and Rider that could mean trouble for a small group, so they went prepared. Ben carried a sidearm, and Monkey had his staff and enough ammunition to half-fill his bag. Trip only had her databand and EMP, but that had seemed like enough in the past.

Once they reached town, Monkey walked a few paces behind Trip, his head swinging this way and that to see everything at once. He paused every few steps to listen, then lunged forward keep pace. The street was too narrow and the buildings too high to get a good sense of what could be lurking beyond, but there were no stories out of Rider for the past few years.

"Which way?" Trip asked. "Do you know where the parts are?"

"This way," Ben said. "Geoff, keep an eye on Graham, please. Don't wander too far off."

Geoff jerked his head toward the other end of the street, and Graham happily went with him.

"How's your ankle?" Ben asked Trip, for what might have been the sixth time.

"Much better," Trip said, and was only lying a little. "It's really just the elbow now, and my face."

"They'll heal if you go easy on them," Ben said. "I know it's hard for you."

Trip murmured something noncommittal and generic, and they turned off the main road.

There was a small mech factory on the south side of town, where the residents had been gathering their own makeshift defenses against the war. The factory had escaped being picked clean by scavengers because it seemed anything but. Centuries ago, it was a sporting arena of some kind. It was only when the war came that they tore out the seating and the too-bright grass and started churning out weaponry and homespun mechs that might protect them. Trip hoped they had.

"This is it," Ben said.

The roof had long since caved in, and Trip had to run a few scans to determine where it was safe to tread. She pointed them toward the window a hundred feet down. She kept her databand up as Ben and Monkey climbed in through the open window and disappeared into the dark.

Trip tried to keep Rose's voice out of her head, but the accusation was so on-point, it was difficult not to feel her scorn all the way from Liberty. If they hadn't stopped Pyramid, Heather would still be alive. If they hadn't stopped Pyramid, there might still be that sanctuary. If they hadn't, if they hadn't.

When her databand beeped, Trip had her eyes squeezed shut so hard that she almost missed it. "Trip? Hey, Trip, wake up."

"Yeah, sorry," she said. "What, Monkey?"

"We got what we need. We're coming back out."

"Okay. See you in a few."

Trip shook Rose's voice out of her head.

The databand flashed again. "Trip, where are you?" Geoff asked, his voice strange. "You there?"

"I'm here," she said. "What's wrong? Are you and Graham okay?"

"We're okay," Geoff said. "But you need to see this."

Trip could see Ben and Monkey climbing back through the broken window, their canvas bags distended with uneven shapes.

"Did you find the dog?" Trip asked.

There was a pause, then Geoff chuckled shakily. "Yeah. Come get Graham—he's freaked out."

"Okay," Trip said. "Okay, we're coming. Stay put."

Ben set down his flashlight to readjust his bag. "What is it?"

Trip tapped her databand. "I don't know. They found the dog, but something's wrong."

* * *

><p>Right away, Trip could tell whatever had spooked Geoff wasn't one of his games. He stood at the corner of a building, a hand over his mouth and half-hunched over as if he were ready to throw up. Graham was crouched at his side, his sandy hair over his eyes.<p>

"Whoa, little man," Ben said, and scooped him up. "What's this? No crying, huh? What did you find?"

Graham's face was scrunched up, all red and blotchy, and he just pointed back into the alley with a trembling finger.

"Geoff?" Trip asked.

The color had been sapped from Geoff's face. "Back there," he said. "It's back there."

Monkey set his bag down and pulled his staff from its loops.

"No, not..." Geoff said. "It's not dangerous."

Monkey took the staff anyway, and Trip followed him into the alley.

They found the dog near the end, behind a rusting dumpster. The light from their flashlights bounced off the dog's wet, matted fur. Blood ran over the dog's mouth and onto the pavement, shining black in the half-dark.

"This is recent," Monkey said, simply.

Trip bit back a wave of nausea. "Geoff's seen dead animals before. What's so strange about—what did you find?"

"Shine your light over here."

Trip didn't believe it, even close up. It made no sense at all, and it still sounded impossible to her when Ben came up and said exactly what she was thinking. "Oh, God, is that a slaver headband? What the—what the hell happened here?"

Monkey didn't say anything. He crouched over the dog and pulled the band from its head. Clots of blood and matted fur came with it, and Trip couldn't look away.

"Is this someone's idea of a joke?" Ben asked.

"No," Monkey said. "The dog died wearing this. Probably _because_ of this."

"What does that mean?"

Trip and Monkey looked at each other. "It means..." Monkey said slowly, "that someone other than Pyramid is using the headbands."

"Not just that," Trip said. "Someone is reprogramming them and using them on animals. They shouldn't work like this."

The dog was half-starved, but its gut was bloated and foam had only recently dried around its muzzle. Its paws were rough and bloody, as if it'd been running for hours to escape. Whoever was doing this was doing it now, and possibly very close to Rider.

"We should get out of here," Ben said. He gave the dog a look that was part pity, part fear, and hurried back to Geoff and Graham.

"Monkey..." Trip said, and he shook his head, but she didn't know which question he was answering.

"The headband is fried," he said. "We can take it, but I don't know what good it is."

Trip took it from him, holding it by forefinger and thumb. "No, it's no good. I can't pull anything from this."

"Leave it, then," Monkey said. "Let's go."

"Let's go," Trip echoed numbly, but didn't actually move to do it until he took her arm and led her away.

* * *

><p>They had the parts they needed for the turbine and some extra besides, but the entire group was somber as they made the return trip to Liberty. Trip could feel the dog's blood on her fingertips, no matter how much she wiped them on the edge of her shirt. It wasn't just the dog. The dog was just a decaying thing now, something that died in agony alone in an alley—but whoever caused it was still out there. And there were always more dogs.<p>

"Trip," Monkey said. "Stop it."

"What?" she asked. "I'm not doing anything."

"You're worrying so loud I can hear it," he said. "Don't think about the dog."

"Sure."

Monkey didn't have a response to that, but he walked a little closer to her, a human shield from the fears that were suddenly following.

By the time they were within sight of Liberty, they had had fallen behind the others. Geoff walked ahead, faster than the rest of them. Ben and Graham were right behind him, sticking close to each other and occasionally saying things Trip couldn't catch. They put more and more footsteps between them and Rider, and the world started feeling right again, the closer they got to home.

"Will you stay for a while?" Trip asked. "Long enough to help us with the turbine?"

"Yeah, of course," Monkey said.

Trip swallowed again; her throat was oddly clenched. "And maybe...you could think about staying in Liberty again, for good. That house is still empty, if you want it."

Monkey kept walking, his eyes forward. "Didn't work," he said. "Too many people. I can't..._think_, with all that noise."

"Yeah, well, that's the point of towns, I guess. People."

"You keep them, then," Monkey said. "What's wrong with what we're doing now?"

"Nothing, I guess," Trip said. "But..." She couldn't think of how to say the next part, and they covered the next quarter-mile in silence.

There was never any time, after Pyramid. There were a thousand new mouths to feed, and a thousand pairs of feet to lead back across the desert. No matter how hard they tried those first few weeks, they were too busy to be anything more than unexpected caretakers.

Trip began to reach for Monkey's arm, but let her hand drop to her side. After the enslaved came home, to what would become Liberty, something shifted between them, and there was suddenly this new presence of a thousand people to contend with. Even when they were alone, there was too much at the periphery, vying for attention. Trip understood on some level why Monkey chose to stay at the canyon. But it hurt, like having something anchored inside her slowly peeled away, straight out of muscle and bone.

"I miss having you around," she said at last. "Not at the canyon. Somewhere I can find you."

"You can always find me," Monkey said, but Trip shook her head.

"One day I'm going to send the dragonfly and you won't be there," she said quietly, turning her head away from Ben and Graham's backs. "Someday you're going to run, like you always said you did. You said six months, just to make sure we were okay. It's been a year, so when..."

Monkey listened without looking at her.

"Someday you're going to disappear on me, and I can't..." Trip trailed off. "When all that happened, you were all I had. And when we found him, you...helped me bury him. Not everyone would have done that."

"Ben would have."

"Ben would have. But it was you."

They were within sight of Liberty now, and Geoff and Graham took off running toward it, racing the midday sun and each other.

"Monkey," Trip said. "Why won't you look at me?"

Because he was completely ignoring her, his face angled back the way they'd come.

"Monkey?"

"Be quiet," he said suddenly, hard and low. "Ben, behind us."

"What is it?" Ben asked, then stood stock-still as he heard it, too.

Trip listened. There was a faint, distant scraping noise, like dragging metal that sent off bursts of sparks. "What is it?"

"Start running," Monkey said. "Now. Go."

"What?" Trip asked. Her head was throbbing from the walk, and the painkillers were failing her again. "Monkey, what is it? I'm not going anywhere without—"

"Dragonfly," Monkey said softly, meaning her, meaning the name he called her too rarely. "Listen to me. Do you have your EMP with you?"

She fumbled for it, clasped to her belt. "Yeah."

"Good." Monkey closed his hand over hers on it. "Grab Geoff and Graham, and run with them to the bridges. If it gets past us, zap it. You might only get a few seconds, so make it count."

Terror settled in the pit of her stomach. "What _is_ it?"

"Scorpion," he said, and turned.

She could see it now—so like the giant mechs at Pyramid that her stomach churned. It was as big as a mech dog, but moved with a different rhythm and a telltale scraping noise as its metal shell contracted. The scorpion was still relatively small in the distance, but it was ridiculously fast, much too fast to outrun.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Distract it," Monkey said. "Go. Get the kids and go."

Trip should have known better than to be frozen for another few seconds, as if she'd never seen a mech before, but it still took hold of some instinct in her to stay perfectly still, and it didn't break until Monkey pushed her toward the settlement. "Go!"

The mech had already seen them by the time she started running, by the time Monkey started shouting and waving his arms in the air to get its attention. She stumbled for the first dozen steps before finding her footing and racing headlong at Geoff and Graham, who had turned back at the sound of the shouting and stared with big eyes.

"Go!" Trip screamed at them. "Go go go!"

Graham was paralyzed, but Geoff snapped back quicker, grabbed Graham's hand, and sped off ahead of Trip. Her feet pounded against the dirt, the dusty air scorching in her lungs, but she kept running until she heard the Cloud activate far behind her.

To her surprise, it wasn't Monkey who shot up into the sky. It was Ben, flying with a bit less surety but no less speed. He didn't have the finesse of hours of practice, but he was good enough to dive at the mech and keep it from using its tail while it tried to choose a target. Trip heard the gun fire a few times as Ben tried to coax the scorpion away from Monkey, but the mech was quickly learning that the firearm was noisy but little more.

Trip took half a dozen more steps and changed her mind.

She pulled in enough fiery air to bellow at Geoff. "Get him home! Get Graham back!"

"Where are you going?" Geoff shouted back at her, but Trip had already turned around and was running toward Monkey and Ben.

The scorpion's tail lashed furiously in the air, trying to knock Ben out of the sky and skewer Monkey at the same time.

"Hey, you hunk of metal!" Monkey shouted. "Come on, I'm right here! You big, stupid can opener!"

The scorpion's legs twisted madly and propelled it toward him, only to back off as Ben swooped down on the Cloud and pulled its attention away.

It wouldn't last much longer, if they didn't come up with something.

Monkey had already used all his ammunition against the mech, but without so much as denting its armor. His shoulders heaved as he leapt from side to side, dodging the scorpion's tail. Each time, he got a bit slower, until at last he mis-stepped, and the stinger caught his pant leg and rent flesh down to the ankle.

"Monkey!" Trip screamed, and he spun.

"Get out of here!" he shouted. "Get the kids home!"

"They're fine—they'll make it!" Trip said, and the scorpion turned to face her.

The mech rattled itself, its armor plates shifting as it bunched to rush them. Ben shouted, but the scorpion was no longer paying him the slightest attention, even when he dove so low that the Cloud buzzed the mech's sensors along its back.

Trip breathlessly shoved the EMP into Monkey's hand. "Here," she panted. "I'll distract it so you can hit its main board behind its headplate."

"You're too close to use your databand," Monkey said. "It won't go for a hologram."

"No, but it'll go for me."

"Trip, don't you—TRIP!"

She pushed him away roughly, and started running toward the mech. "Come on, you see me!" Her red hair would show up on its sensors. Her bandaged arm, too, if it could pick up on those things. "Come on!"

The mech rumbled, its motors turning it toward the sound of her voice. "Yeah, come on!" She was already breathing hard, feeling every tendon in her ankle throb, but she turned from the mech and started leading it away.

This was different than the first time she'd seen the mech dog with Monkey. She was still scared, nearly out of her mind with terror, but it gave her a kick of adrenaline that set her brain faster, and her heart pumping wildly in her chest. As long as she kept moving, they stood a chance.

She risked a glance over her shoulder.

The scorpion was after her, full-tilt. It crushed saplings and ancient debris in its mad dash, its legs criss-crossing so fast she couldn't tell them apart. The tail was raised high, following her dodges and steady in spite of its speed.

It was way too fast to outpace for much longer, but she vaulted over a fallen tree and ran until her chest wanted to burst.

"Monkey!" she screamed, just once, and heard him land with a thunderous crash on the scorpion's back.

Metal shrieked as he took hold of the protective plate and pulled. Trip skidded to a stop and fell, sending up a cloud of dust.

Ben was there in an instant, the Cloud whining under his feet. "You all right?"

"Fine," she wheezed.

The scorpion was trying to find a way to stab Monkey without impaling itself. Its tail swung around in a frenzy, and the mech's metal body rolled back and forth in an attempt to dislodge him. Monkey gripped the headplate with both hands and tore it free, and the mech wailed.

There was a faint pop of electricity. The scorpion shuddered and its eyes rolled wildly, trying to focus on anything, and it began to trip sideways.

Monkey held on with one hand, trying not to let it throw him.

"Monkey!" Trip shouted. "Monkey, look out!"

The scorpion's tail whipped up, and Monkey dove to the side as it stabbed down. He flew off the mech and landed hard on the ground in its path. The scorpion took another wobbling step toward him and began to tip over.

"Ben—" Trip started, but he was already up and gone on the Cloud.

He aimed, then leapt from the Cloud and sent it crashing into the mech's side and threw it off balance, away from Monkey.

Trip started running back the moment the scorpion toppled. It collapsed on its side, its legs still twitching. Monkey was back on top of it before Trip could shout again, tearing the wiring out of the back of its head. He took hold of the main line, yanked with all the strength he had left, and the mech went still.

All at once, the only noise was the slow hiss of pressure escaping from the mech's shell.

"Oh," Trip gasped. "Oh, God. Okay. Is everyone okay?"

Monkey climbed down the scorpion's shell gingerly, his pant leg tattered and bloody.

"Monkey?" Trip asked.

"It's fine."

"But—"

"I said it's fine!" he barked at her, and she shrank back.

"Monkey," Ben said. "Easy."

Monkey ignored him and walked up to Trip, favoring his injured leg. "You didn't listen to me," he said. "Again. You don't _listen_."

"I _helped_ you," she said. "I saved your life! And Ben's!"

"You could have been killed!"

"So could you!"

They stared each other down, furious and twitching with adrenaline.

"When I tell you to do something—" Monkey said.

"Yeah?" Trip demanded. "What?"

Ben picked up the dented Cloud from the slain mech and collapsed it neatly. "We're going back."

Trip and Monkey didn't hear him at first. They didn't hear him until he stepped between them and said it again, and they snapped free of each other. "Back to town," Ben said. "We need to find Graham and Geoff. There are other things out here."

"Yeah, sorry," Trip said, and suddenly was. "They're okay. We could see the bridges when I turned back."

Ben put the Cloud in his bag and started back without saying anything else.

"There is going to be a day," Monkey said, nearly growling it, "that something I tell you will mean life and death."

"I _understand_ that," Trip said, but he grabbed her hand and she quieted.

"If you don't listen, and you choose wrong, you're going to die, do you understand?" Monkey said, and she heard the desperation behind it. "Do you hear me? Listen to what I say, when I say it. If you don't, and I have to watch you die—"

He dropped her hand suddenly, and he turned away. "Don't do that again."

"Letting you get killed is supposed to be better?" she asked, but he was already leaving her behind.

She held back the thousands of things she wanted to say to his retreating back, and walked after him, dusting out his footprints with hers, back to Liberty.


	5. Before We Land

Five: Before We Land

* * *

><p>After only a few days, the town was starting to press in on him. All of Trip's people had a weight to them. They were loud and bright and everywhere, and Monkey was unaccustomed to so much activity after the unchanging emptiness of the canyon. Sometimes he opened his mouth and was surprised to hear his voice still in working order, if a bit rusty. This was Trip's vision for her new home, but it grated on him slightly, and for reasons that he was only half honest about.<p>

The other reason, the one he wasn't anywhere near ready to tell her, was that he heard children laughing.

It wouldn't have mattered but for the fact that he heard laughter where there were no children to go with it. He heard them as he fell asleep on the far side of town, long past nightfall. He heard them when Trip was mid-streak about some technicality he couldn't hope to grasp, and his thoughts lumbered on like turtles as Trip's voice danced around him. The children would laugh, unnervingly, and he'd spin to see where Graham or Wren or one of the nameless many were hiding, just out of sight. But they never were.

At night, he would go wandering the streets, trying to pinpoint the smudged sounds, like ghosts chanting jokes behind his back and skittering off when he turned. There was never anything to find, and he would walk back the way he'd come, cold and feeling something solid forming in his stomach.

Eventually he learned to ignore them. It would get better as soon as he left Liberty, and the memory of children's laughter never hurt anyone.

* * *

><p>There was a sort of boring, reliable comfort in the usual pattern of checking the town's power systems and defenses during Monkey's visits. It was just easier, having someone who knew exactly where to step, and what meant the system wasn't acting the way it should. The fact that Monkey could cling to near-perfect surfaces with bare hands didn't hurt, either.<p>

They met early that morning, down by the bridges, and walked along the paths to the waterfalls. Monkey would hang from seemingly invisible footholds and relay information from the water wheel's control panel back to Trip. She punched numbers into her databand, shouted an all-clear, and they moved on to the next one.

They didn't talk about the scorpion, or the dead dog, or any of it. The routine was practically a ritual, and bringing those sorts of fears with them to the borderline between Liberty and the wildness invited too much trouble.

After the hydraulic system was finished, Monkey pulled himself back up onto the path, his hair dripping. Trip scrolled through the numbers on her databand. "Think you can do the perimeter with me?"

Monkey shook water from his ear. "Problems?"

"Just more traffic than usual," she said.

She had the stripped-down dragonfly in hand by the time they reached the first sensor. Monkey took it wordlessly and began to climb to the sensor, wedged halfway up the rock face.

"Ready."

Trip dialed up the dragonfly's signal to mimic a common message carrier. Monkey waited, motionless.

"Pass two," Trip said mechanically, and moved the signal to something closer to a mech panther, knee-high and rarer than most, but still dangerous. The calibration was outside acceptable sensitivity, and didn't trip as soon as she wanted. She adjusted the tolerance levels on her databand and Monkey climbed back down.

There were twenty-four sensors around the perimeter. Liberty itself was a half-mile in diameter, and the defense perimeter stretched five hundred yards beyond it. The sensors were in strange places, some anchored to the rock in fissures below, some a dozen feet off the ground. Calibrating the network of them could take hours.

Trip retied her shoes and double-knotted them for good measure.

"Just crank them up as high as they'll go," Monkey said, as he did every time. "Send your messages from the other side."

Trip took the dragonfly from him and reset it. "Can't. Anything putting out that much noise will show up on scans."

"Whose?"

The dragonfly was a sad, intentionally maimed thing, its wings pinned to its back and its lens permanently unfocused. Trip tested it against her databand and handed it back to Monkey for the next sensor. "Well, Pyramid slavers." She drew in a breath and held it. "Or...mechs now, I guess."

Monkey grunted softly and started for the next sensor from memory. "A lot of the town's energy go to maintaining this?"

"Yeah, about half."

The sensor was nearly ten feet off the ground, but Monkey had no trouble reaching it. "Seems like you're wasting it."

He wasn't totally wrong. Most alarms were false. When they weren't, it was a rogue mech animal, prowling too close to Liberty without any real chance of reaching it. "Maybe," Trip said. "But it's worth it, if people can sleep feeling safe."

"It's not like they work, anyway," Monkey said. He waved the dragonfly over the sensor. "Right?"

Trip looked up at him, her databand forgotten. "What?"

"Trip, the alarm."

"Oh!" She stabbed a finger at her controls, and the screech of the first wave of sirens stopped before they could cascade to the next. Her heartbeat slammed in her ears. "What did you mean, it didn't work?"

Monkey slid down the rock, rocks and moss tumbling ahead of him. "When Pyramid came. You said they took you first, then they came back for the town."

Trip hadn't thought about it. There hadn't been a before, or a why. It had just happened, and the world was so dark afterward that it was hard to look back. "I don't know. Something must have gone wrong. It's not perfect."

Monkey gave her a long, searching look and handed her the dragonfly. She was a little slow in taking it. "Thanks."

The fifteenth sensor was lodged behind an outcropping of rock that was simply too narrow for Monkey to fit his arm. He climbed halfway up and held a hand out for Trip.

She stepped up the rock and he lifted her the rest of the way, as easily as if she were the dragonfly. She sat on his shoulder and reached into the space between the rocks. "Almost got it."

"No problem. Just don't fall."

Trip's fingers scrabbled along the rock, trying to get close enough to the sensor. "You wouldn't let me, would you?"

"It's kin—ow!"

"Sorry!"

Monkey changed his handholds so he could move her foot away from his ribs. "I might drop you on purpose if you kick me again."

"I said I was sorry." The dragonfly buzzed faintly in her hand, and the alarm went off. "Got it."

He caught her as she slid from his shoulder, and set her gently on the ground. "Careful."

"I got it."

"Yeah, okay."

They cleared the remaining sensors without speaking, and headed back to Liberty.

* * *

><p>"Did you see Geoff? His hands were like—this—like, as far apart as his arms would go! God, like he was trying to explain how big a fish was, but a scorpion."<p>

"I like the part where Graham rescued you," Monkey said. "_That_ is my favorite part, where the kid literally throws you over his shoulder—"

"Like a sack of potatoes!" Trip said breathlessly. "I know!"

The smiles hurt, suddenly, and they looked back to town. It seemed too close, too big and complicated.

"That dog..." Trip started, and lost the courage to finish it.

"We'll talk about the dog later," Monkey said. "Don't think about it."

The dog meant something horrible happening just out of her reach, something that left the imagined taste of metal in the back of her throat. Trip thrust the dragonfly back into her belt. "It's awful to do that to an animal. People are bad enough, but animals don't even know what's happening. Enslavement was just evil. No one should have the—"

She forgot. She forgot all the time, and Monkey let her.

The dull marks where the slaver headband had clung to his forehead were still there, like fingerprints from ghosts, deep red against his skin. He hadn't had time to form scars, but the marks were clear enough to keep them from truly forgetting.

"I..." Trip swallowed. "I never wanted to see anyone suffering like that again."

"Yeah, I know," Monkey said, simply. "Me neither."

Trip took a deep breath to say something, but Monkey pulled the Cloud from its holster and activated it. Trip flinched as the wave of cool air pushed over her. "How long are you going to keep apologizing?" Monkey asked.

"I didn't say anything," Trip said.

"You were going to."

Trip reached out to stroke the marks on his face, but the thought abandoned her halfway. "I—No, I'm done apologizing, I think."

"Good. Come on."

"What?"

Monkey glanced at her leg. "You've been limping on that damn ankle. And, I hate to say it, but my leg is killing me."

Trip merely looked at him. "You said it was fine."

"That was two hours ago. Get on."

The Cloud whirred under his feet, just a handspan off the ground. "Can it carry both of us?"

"Since Ben did who knows what to it when he fixed it up, yeah. Come here."

Trip stepped toward him, watching the Cloud buzz angrily, like a trapped insect.

"It's just like the watchtower you're climbing all the time," Monkey said.

Trip eyed it warily. "The watchtower doesn't _move_."

Monkey waited as she walked around the Cloud, really considering it for the first time. "You're absolutely sure?" she asked at last.

"Would I lie to you?"

"Absolutely." But she took his hand anyway.

He pulled her up over his back and Trip gripped his shoulder with her good hand. "Ready?" he asked.

The Cloud bucked under them. "No," Trip said. "No, no, forget it. I changed my mind."

"Too late," he said, and there was a definite mischievousness in his voice, and the air rushed up under them.

Shooting into the sky was like forgetting something important at home and only realizing it when you arrived, three days later, wherever you were going. Trip's stomach stayed somewhere on the ground as they rocketed away, seemingly straight into the endless sky.

"Ohmygodstop_please_stop!" Trip was screaming, half-senseless, as the air grew sharper. "Stopstopstopstop!"

The Cloud did stop, as best it could, and hovered softly in midair.

"Trip," Monkey said quietly. "Look."

She buried her face in his hair. "Oh no. No, not interested. Get us down, please."

"Really, look."

Trip drew in a deep breath and clenched it inside her, as if she'd never get another one, and lifted her eyes.

The wasteland was a splatter of colors, from the rust-red and gray patchwork of Liberty, suddenly so far below them, out to the farthest greens and silver of the nameless cities. There were no clear landmarks from this height: just open land. They couldn't make out mechs roaming the waste, or individual trees. The road was there, on the horizon, just a pale thread.

"Oh," Trip said again, very differently. "_Look_ at it."

"Yeah, that's what I said," Monkey replied, but gently. "Small, isn't it?"

"It's...no, it's _enormous_," she said. "The world is. _Look_ at it."

Monkey hummed. "Look down, I meant."

Liberty was a dot far under their feet. Trip couldn't see her house, or Monkey's. She couldn't tell where the watchtower was, or where Neil's lab was crammed underground.

"Small," she repeated.

The Cloud hissed, adjusting its pressure, but they barely heard it.

"Remember that," Monkey said. "Remember Liberty from here. _Small_."

Trip swallowed. "Okay. Small. I can do small, can't I?"

"Yeah, you can. Dog or no damn dog."

They hung there, suspended against the open sky, safe and far from everything.

"Remember," Monkey said again.

"I will."

He drummed his fingers along her leg. "Down?"

Trip took her time answering. "Yes," she said finally. "Thank you."

* * *

><p>Monkey stiffened as they rounded the corner toward the entrance and saw Geoff crouched next to his bike, very close to the rear wheel but not actually touching it. Wren sat at his side, mimicking the way he tilted his head to each side to see under the motor.<p>

"_Hey_!" Monkey thundered, and Geoff and Wren sprang to their feet. "What are you doing now?"

"I wasn't touching it!" Geoff said. "I swear. I just wanted to look at it."

"Then take five steps back and look at it. That thing keeps me alive."

Geoff looked wounded. "I wouldn't break anything."

"Yeah, great. Just don't touch it."

Monkey waved them off, and Geoff retreated to a safer distance, but not much. Wren stuck close by him.

They heard a strong, high whistle from the watchtower, and they looked up as Mark climbed down. "Where were you?"

"Perimeter check," Trip said. "Anything wrong?"

Mark shoved his hands in his pockets as soon as his feet touched ground. "No. The alarm went off for a second, but we figured it was you."

"That was us." Trip pulled the dragonfly from her belt and handed it to him. "Put that back in the tower, could you? There's been a lot more traffic lately."

Mark blinked at her. "Messages? Dragonflies?"

"Yeah, just...more traffic. The system isn't able to auto-recalibrate easily, and it took a while to fix. Has anyone been sending anything unusual out?"

Mark stopped to think about it, pinching his mouth slightly. "Yeah. Well, I've been in contact with the other settlements about the scorpion. Neil's been sending out his usual bugs. Ben's been talking to Granville a lot, too."

"But nothing new?"

"No, not really."

"Huh. Okay, thanks."

Trip started off, Monkey close behind her, when Mark cleared his throat. "Did Ben find you?"

"No, did he need me?"

"I SAID GET AWAY FROM THE BIKE!" Monkey roared. Geoff and Wren froze in place, and Monkey stomped over, scattering them like startled birds.

As Monkey knelt to look over his bike, Mark rolled his shoulders uneasily. "Uh, anyway. The blade's going up tonight," he said. "Around six, so the whole town would be there. Ben wanted you there."

The weight lifted from Trip's shoulders like a snake uncoiling around her. "Oh, good. _Good_. Are you coming?"

"Of course." He smiled at her. "Ben wanted to see you anyway, I think. Before tonight. He didn't say about what, though."

"'Kay," Trip said. "And...thanks for being so helpful lately. With the turbine and bridges and all."

"No problem." Mark puffed up ever so slightly, his chest rounded out. "Least I could do."

At the bike, Monkey rolled his eyes. Trip smiled at Mark to keep him from looking over his shoulder. "Thanks all the same," she said.

Monkey cursed loudly and readjusted his mirrors.

"Trip, um..." Mark dropped his voice to a whisper; she had to lean close to hear him. "I want to talk to you sometime...about him."

"What?" she said, too loud, and Mark jumped.

"I've been asking around about the scorpion, and his name came up, and..."

"Whose, Monkey's?"

Mark shushed her, wide-eyed with panic. He wanted so badly to tell her whatever it was, he was nearly shaking with it. "Yes, about him. There are people saying they knew him, from before."

"And?" Trip asked, carefully bored.

He glanced around her at Monkey, whose back was still to them. "Come talk to me later, when he's not around, okay?"

"Whatever you heard, I'm sure it's wrong," Trip said. "Don't worry."

Monkey stood, cursed at his knee that cracked unexpectedly, and came back to them. "Did Ben want us?"

"Yeah." Trip turned back to Mark. "Take that dragonfly to the watchtower for the next perimeter check for me?"

He wouldn't meet her eyes. "Yeah, sure." Mark just barely looked at Monkey before his gaze darted away and he spun on his heel back to the tower. They watched him throw open the guard house door and disappear inside.

"Trouble?" Monkey asked.

"No," Trip said, because it wasn't.

* * *

><p>"It's not possible," Neil said, as soon as they asked. "No. You can't do it."<p>

"Well, that must be the first time you're wrong," Ben said, "because someone did."

They huddled around the console in the war room. The data Trip had pulled from her dragonflies to the canyon could only trace back a few stray dogs, and never in the same direction. The sightings were small, red dots on the vidscreen, without a common point. They marked the place where they'd found the dog in Rider for good measure, but if there was a pattern, it was indecipherable.

"It's not _possible_," Neil said again, unable not to sound intrigued.

"Where would someone even get the band?" Trip asked. "We destroyed them at Pyramid."

"Only the ones there. The rest are all over," Monkey said. "I find them all the time, wherever people dropped them when they stopped working."

Ben shrugged. "I have a dozen at the clinic," he said, "just from the people who arrived here still wearing them."

"Do you?" Neil said thoughtfully. "I wonder if..."

"No!" Ben and Trip said together, and Monkey merely looked at Neil like he was banging rocks together.

"It was just a thought," Neil said, defensive. "It's not like I have any dogs anyway. You can't train rabbits."

"I'm sure someone tried," Trip said darkly. "It's crazy, after Pyramid, after _seeing_ what the bands do to people, to put it on an animal..."

Monkey interrupted her. "Maybe it was the slaver mechs."

They all turned to consider him. "What?" Trip asked.

"The mechs," Monkey said again. "They started doing crazy stuff right before they shut down. Who says they didn't grab some dogs and put slaver bands on them?"

Trip bit her lip, unconvinced. "I don't know. Can they reprogram a band to react to a dog?"

"Who knows?" Ben said. "They had Pyramid's technology somewhere in them. Maybe they had the ability to reprogram the bands on the fly."

"But there's no signal anymore," Trip said. "We smashed everything we could find."

"Maybe it wasn't enough," Ben said. "Maybe you missed something."

They'd laid waste to Pyramid's grand system of computers and tubing, dismantling what they could reach and flat-out smashing what they couldn't. They'd rent cables clean out of their sockets, and sliced the cooling system until the floor shone. The old man they buried, not sure if he were really human or machine, and left him without a grave marker.

"I think...we did everything we could," Trip said. "I don't think we missed anything."

"Did anyone stay behind?" Ben asked.

"No," Monkey said. "Not a chance."

"But it's not like we sealed it, exactly," Trip said slowly. "I guess someone else could have gotten in later."

"Who'd want to?" Monkey asked, and no one had an answer.

"So, fine," Neil said. "There was a slaver band on a dog, which you didn't bother to bring..."

"It was shorted," Trip snapped. "Nothing left on it."

"And I'm supposed to believe that someone snuck into Pyramid after you went to all the trouble of freeing the—" he looked at Monkey and changed his mind, slightly, "—_enslaved_, just to salvage what you didn't destroy properly?"

"We just wanted to see if you knew anything about reprogramming the bands for animals," Ben said. "Not to listen to you being a smartass."

"Give me a band and I'll try," Neil said. "But no, I don't think even he—" He backpedaled madly as they all looked to him, waiting for the rest. "Never mind."

"Who?" Ben demanded.

Neil shrugged, his shoulders thin under his coat. "I know some people out in the waste. Some are in settlements. Everyone's taken a crack at breaking the programming in the bands. Like extensions of their databands."

"They're not _toys_," Monkey said.

Neil met his stare. "They're tools."

"Ask them," Trip said. "Ask whoever you know about these. See if any of them are stupid enough to test on live animals."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Neil asked.

"Figure it out."

Neil stood, banging the back of his chair against the wall. "Fine. Anything else you want to ignore me about?"

"Don't tell anyone in Liberty about this," Ben said. "There's no need to stir up panic."

Neil waved a hand in the general direction of Ben's concern. "Why would I want to talk about this?" He gave each of them a pitying look, and left.

"That was...strange," Trip said. "Neil's not usually like that."

"He'll get prickly if you poke him hard enough," Ben said. "When you don't have any opinions but your own for so long, whatever anyone else says is immediate heresy."

"He was a terrible apprentice, wasn't he?" Trip asked.

Ben shrugged, diplomatic and too kind. "Well. He was more interested in tinkering."

The same thought sparked in all their heads at the same time.

"You don't think—" Trip started.

"Did any of the dogs come from here?" Monkey asked.

"No," Ben said firmly. "There's no way."

Trip tried so hard not to look to the door. "No...that's crazy. Neil can be kind of...weird...sometimes, but he's not evil."

Monkey's silence was deafening.

* * *

><p>The third day after the trip to Rider, just as the emergency power was dipping into its last reserves, the turbine went back up. The entire town crammed up the hill, leaving the stragglers to watch, up on their toes, from the town square. Some of them climbed onto the catwalks to watch, following Trip's lead.<p>

She watched Ben scale the rear tower and swing down to reach the center spoke. He shouted orders that were too faint to make out from the catwalks, and the blade slid into place. "Finally," Trip said. "It's like it didn't happen."

Monkey stood next to her, paying more attention to the crowd than the turbine.

Metal clanked against metal as the blade snapped in, and the town began to reverberate with excited talk. Trip grinned until her face hurt, and waved at Ben, although he couldn't see her.

"Glad to see this finished," Monkey said.

"No kidding," Trip said. "I'm never doing that again."

They watched in silence as the turbine began to move, slowly at first, then gathering speed until the fins spun full speed, half-blurred from the catwalks. The auxiliary defenses crackled back to life and filled the air with faint popping. Hair rose on the back of Trip's neck as the crowd roared.

"These people," Trip said, as the noise carried on, "could be next."

Monkey leaned down to hear her. "What?"

"Just...if we found a dog, that means that people are next. Maybe someone snatched off the road, right?"

"That won't happen."

"I wish..." Trip didn't have words for all the things she wished. "Why did we have to find it? If we hadn't, everything would be fine."

Monkey kept his eyes on the square. "It would still be there, even if we didn't find it. But I'm telling you, it was just some slaver mech that didn't know what it was doing. There can't be another explanation."

"Yeah, but..."

"Enough," he said, almost roughly. "Leave it. Worry about the people here. Take care of them." He caught himself and reeled his tone back in long enough to sigh. "As soon as this is done, I'm going back."

"Okay," she said. "Are you coming to the council meeting tomorrow?"

"No, I'm..."

Trip met his eyes. "Oh. Back to the canyon, you mean."

"Yeah. There's stuff I need to do, and the turbine's back up and running."

Monkey was moving back and forth with energy that was unusual to him, bouncing some idea in his head back and forth that Trip couldn't see. "What do you need to do?"

"Maintenance stuff. Get parts for the bike that are only in the canyon. Check the fences. You know."

"Yeah."

The turbine had been spinning for five solid minutes now, and the crowd began to disperse. The blades spun evenly, although one glimmered sharply in the sunlight, newer and brighter than the others. The dull hum of electricity fed through the gates under their feet, completing the circuit around the town.

"You'll be fine," Monkey said. "Send a dragonfly if you need me."

"Okay." Trip fought back to the memory of Liberty from the sky: just a dot, surrounded by so many other things. "I can manage."

"Yeah, you can." He put steel behind it. "Don't let anyone say you can't."

Trip smiled. "Can I see you off?"

"Sure," Monkey said. "First thing tomorrow."

* * *

><p>She was so sure, for just a little while longer, that everything could really be all right. The next morning, she and Monkey walked down through the levels of the town, each street corner filled with people chattering, vidscreens blaring from their doorways. The gates buzzed with extra vehemence at them before allowing them through; everything was fit to burst with energy and light.<p>

Monkey walked past all of it without thought, without turning his head to the noise or motion. Trip tried to keep pace with him, but he was walking faster than usual, and she was half-jogging at his side. "Wait up, okay?" she asked, more than once. He would, for a dozen paces, then slowly gather speed again.

By the time they reached Monkey's bike, she was nearly out of breath, but didn't dare show it. Geoff was at the watchtower, but he scrambled down, Wren close behind him, to see Monkey off. "Leaving already?"

"Yeah," Monkey said. "You take care of things here."

Geoff almost burst with pride. "Yeah, sure. I mean, yeah."

Wren smiled shyly at Monkey and tilted her head. "Come back soon?"

"Sure."

She grinned at him, then scampered back to the guard house, where the sun wasn't quite so hot, to wait for Geoff.

Geoff went to the controls and started lowering the bridge to the other side. Trip walked with Monkey across the divide and helped him pack a few last-moment baked goods from Marla into the sidecar. He did all the usual things, adjusting his mirrors, testing the balance of the bike, but he did it without looking at her.

"Are you going to tell me what you're so worried about?" she asked.

"Nothing," Monkey said, practically cutting her off. "Nothing's wrong. I just need to get home."

She didn't bother saying, again, that Liberty could be home. "You just...seem worried."

"No."

That was all he offered, and the fear that gnawed at her grew. "Sure," she said, instead. "Sorry."

There was no ritual for when Monkey left, aside from Trip watching his bike disappear beyond the perimeter and feeling everything in the world grow smaller. There was no more open road, or invisible enemies to reach and tear down. It was hard to fit that into something like normal life, and Trip wasn't sure how to try.

"Okay, then," she said. "Thanks for helping with the turbine."

He revved the engine a few times, gave something that was more like a salute than a wave, and started down the winding path to flat land.

"Bye to you, too," Trip said, mildly hurt.

His bike was soon out of sight, but the smell of exhaust hung in the air, unpleasantly sharp.

"I need one of those," Geoff said at her side. "I wonder if they have any at the scra—"

"Hush," Trip said suddenly, and Geoff did.

The sounds of Monkey's bike headed out of the settlement were a regular pattern of the engine struggling up the inclines, or the brakes whining as he eased the bike down a narrow path. Trip strained her ears, but didn't hear the bike at all.

"Weird," Geoff said. "Something's off."

Then they did hear something—Monkey yelling, seemingly wordless, and the following screech of metal against rock and a crash that shook the ground.

"Oh shit," Geoff said. "_Shit_!"

The noise was still throbbing in the air when Trip took off running, pounding the dirt path with her shoes as hard as she could, with Geoff right on her heels.


	6. Gridlock

Interval: Piper

* * *

><p>"Piper! Piper! <em>Piper Ann Marie<em>, you come back here this instant!"

She cupped her hands around her mouth for good measure, to send her voice booming farther down the highway. "PIPER!"

"Mom, quit it." Her older daughter came walking back along the pavement, past the half-downed mile marker. "You'll bring the whole wasteland down on us."

"Did you find your sister?" she asked, her voice strained with all-too-common panic. "She said she'd scout ahead, just a few minutes. She said just a few minutes."

Her daughter readjusted the straps on her bag. "No, no sign yet. I'm going to keep looking, okay?"

"Rachel, you are _not_ leaving me here," her mother said. "We'll walk ahead together. You're not leaving my sight."

"It's not like it's the first time she's wandered off," Rachel said, but she took her mother's bag to help her walk more quickly. "Just stop shouting like that. That caravan we passed yesterday said they've seen raiders."

The woman bunched herself up, like an angry cat. "Your sister wouldn't have been silly enough to get caught by them."

"No, Piper's not stupid," Rachel said. "Come on."

They covered three miles of desolate road side by side. It was still early morning, just barely after the last stars blinked out into daylight, too early for most travelers yet. It would be safe on the open road for another hour, until the rest of the world woke.

It was prettier here than they'd seen in a long time, and it was a pity they were only passing through. Piper loved the flowers by the side of the road, even when Rachel tried to tell her they were just weeds. Weeds had every right to be pretty, Piper had told them, and anyway, it wasn't like anyone was caring for them, so everything was a weed. Rachel hadn't been able to argue with that, and Piper had worn dandelions in her hair until they wilted.

"Pipes, where are you?" Rachel asked quietly.

Her mother drew in a breath to start shouting again, when Rachel saw something shining at the side of the road. "Mom, stop it for a sec. Does that look like Piper's?"

Piper had a small, off-white metal device that played an hour or so of before-world music when they could spare the energy to recharge its fuel cells. She never let go of it, even when she'd memorized all the songs, even if she didn't have any idea what she was singing. Piper couldn't carry much of a tune, either, but they let her hum along once they found that the headphones for their databands worked just as well as the box's tiny speaker. She said it helped, after Pyramid, so they let her keep it.

"Stay here," Rachel said, and pressed her mother's shoulder reassuringly. She set her bags down and walked to the edge of the road, where it dipped off into a ditch.

The device had to be Piper's. There was the dent where she dropped it two states back, and she'd cried for an hour until they could reconnect the battery terminals. Rachel gingerly picked it up, the metal still hot against her skin. "Pipes."

She made an uninformative gesture back at her mother and grabbed the knee-high grass to ease herself into the ditch.

The ditch ran alongside the road for a dozen yards. Rachel walked just above the stagnant water, crushing mosquitoes underfoot, hoping so hard that she was wrong.

But she wasn't that lucky. A large part of surviving on the road was skill and experience, but the rest was pure, dumb luck. And Rachel knew, even before the ditch curved off to the right, away from the road, that there were limits to how much luck they could ask for.

Where the ditch made its turn, Rachel felt the last spark of hope fall away, like a stone dropped into a still pond, and her stomach lurched. Piper's stupid, ugly patterned head scarf lay tangled in the grass, its ends frayed and whipping in the breeze. Rachel knelt to carefully unthread it from the weeds. She registered the sight of blood on the ground with only faint horror, already seeing it from so far away. "Piper...oh, God, Pipes..." Rachel crumpled the scarf in her fist and pressed her fingertips into her eyes until they ached.

"Rachel?" her mother asked, sounding distant, and she snapped upright.

"Coming," she called, and swallowed hard to steady her voice. "Stay there, Mom. I'm coming."

She folded the head scarf carefully and put it in her pocket, and climbed back up to the road.

* * *

><p>Six: Gridlock<p>

* * *

><p>They found what was left of the bike just a few hundred yards from the main bridge. It looked less like a bike and more like a mech that Monkey had finished with and torn the innards clean out of. At first, it was all she saw at the side of the path, just before the rock face dropped away. The engine was still running, sputtering every few seconds. She smelled the smoke before she saw it, and oil dripped on the dirt, only just starting to run off into the ravine.<p>

Geoff tripped to a stop next to her. "Oh, _shit_," he said, apparently at capacity for language.

Trip nudged herself toward the edge as Geoff had the foresight to switch the engine off. She wasn't sure what she'd do if she actually saw Monkey there, broken and bleeding on the jutting rocks a dozen yards down. She slid each foot forward through the dust and peered over.

The morning fog was too thick this early, and she couldn't see anything. Wren appeared, wraith-like, at her side. "Where is he?"

"Over here, Trip," Monkey said, and coughed painfully. "_Fuck_."

Trip spun from the edge of the road and skidded next to him. "Monkey! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

He pushed her away gently. "Tell you in a sec."

Monkey levered himself up from the ground. Trip gave him her shoulder to lean on, but he used it lightly, mostly for balance. "Fuck, my head."

"What happened?" Trip asked. Monkey grunted as he tried to step forward, and he did push on her shoulder then. "Okay, easy."

"Brakes went out," Monkey said through ground teeth. "If I hadn't crashed it on purpose, I'd be over the edge."

"Yeah, they did," Geoff said. "Huh."

Monkey surged toward him, but Trip pushed him back, just barely. "_You_!" he shouted. "You're always fucking with my bike! What did you do to it?"

"Nothing!" Geoff stared at him, indignant. "I didn't do this!"

"You were messing with it yesterday! I saw you!"

"I didn't touch it, and if I did, I wouldn't ruin your brakes!" Geoff shouted, his cheeks flushed. "I'm not an idiot!"

"Well, _someone_ here is!"

For a second, it looked like Monkey was fully prepared to take Geoff by the throat and toss him over the edge. He took three steps toward him, his hands already half-raised, when Wren flitted between them. "Geoff didn't do it!"

"Scram," Monkey growled. "Don't stick your nose in."

She spread her arms in front of him and stomped her foot, childlike. "If he says he didn't, he didn't."

It was so ludicrous, little Wren, maybe a quarter of Monkey's weight, staring him down like a prizefighter from two feet below. Monkey considered her. "Yeah, how do you know?"

"If Geoff said he didn't do something, he didn't, so someone else did and _leave him alone_!"

Monkey took a half-step back, and in the silence that followed, Trip felt an insane relief wash over her. It might have been the adrenaline subsiding after finding Monkey safe, not at the bottom of the ravine, or maybe her brain had finally just given in. Whatever it was, Trip started giggling, quietly at first, then loud enough to turn everyone's heads.

"It's not funny, Trip," Monkey said, but the energy went out of him and his shoulders sagged.

"No, I know," she said, but she said it laughing, fresh tears in her eyes. "_Wren_, my _God._"

Monkey looked back down at Wren, her arms still outstretched and her expression furious.

"You—oh—_fine_," Monkey said, at last. "Whatever."

Wren kept her arms up, a stick-thin barrier. "Promise you won't be angry."

"The anger part is already over, kid."

She gave him a suspicious look and slowly lowered her arms. "Okay."

Geoff stood up and dusted off his pants in sudden embarrassment. "Jeez, Wren. What was that for?"

Wren thrust her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt and shrugged.

"Okay," Monkey said, no wrath left in him. "Let's start over."

"The brakes?" Trip asked.

They crouched by the bike, trying hard not to draw in the smell of burnt plastic. Geoff hung back at first, but ended up practically underfoot, either brainless or fearless. "Did the brake lines wear down?"

Monkey was trying to remove the dented casing that had been mashed toward the front of the bike. "Nah, I check them pretty often—move your head, would you—and they're new. New enough."

"So what happened?" Geoff asked.

The panel came free, and they all craned their necks to look. Trip didn't see much; it was a tangle of wires and tubing and metal, and she rocked back on her heels.

"Oh," Geoff said suddenly.

"God damn it," Monkey said, right after.

Wren stood on her tiptoes to see over their shoulders. "What is it?"

Monkey pulled the tubing free and even Trip could see that it was cut in half, too clean to have been accidental.

"Bet you the rear line is the same," Geoff said.

Monkey just grunted.

Geoff looked at him with tentative pride, no longer immediately afraid of being pounded senseless. "See? I didn't do this."

Monkey twisted the severed brake line in his hand before drawing in a breath and releasing it through his teeth. "No. You wouldn't."

"Who would, though?" Trip asked.

"I dunno," Geoff said, and shrugged. "Who wants you dead?"

* * *

><p>They caused a small fuss, pushing Monkey's bike up the path and into Liberty. Trip took down the security system long enough to let them wheel it through without setting off the alarm, but she doubted it would have made much difference if she hadn't. It was a miracle that they were able to wheel it at all, with the front tire wobbling and scary rattling noises preceding their small parade. Wren brought up the rear, picking up pieces of the bike as they jostled loose and fell onto the path, and stored them in her pockets for safekeeping.<p>

At one point, Trip heard laughter, though someone quickly shut their door on the noise. Monkey pointedly ignored it.

They managed to get the bike all the way to Ben's workshop one way or another. Geoff went ahead to warn him, and Monkey and Trip stopped just shy of the workshop entrance, both panting. Trip flopped on the ground.

"Is there a reason you built this out of lead and cement blocks?" she asked. "This thing weighs a ton."

"It's usually not a problem," Monkey said. "God damn, that's a long walk."

"You okay?"

Monkey rotated both arms in their sockets. "Yeah. Banged up a bit, but I'll live."

"How hard will it be to fix?"

"It's a matter of parts. I've got some back at the canyon, but I can't get the bike there like this."

"I'm sure Ben has something."

"He better, after that walk."

Geoff came back out, with Ben close behind. Ben wiped his hands on a rag and tossed it over his shoulder. "Hell of a day," he said. "What happened?"

Trip stood up. "What happened to _you_? You look terrible."

Ben rubbed his eyes and gestured toward the clinic window. The glass was gone, replaced with heavy plastic and tape until it could be repaired. "I spent most of last night and this morning picking glass out of my instruments," Ben said. "And the sink, and the floor, and the grass, and everything else."

"Did one of the kids toss a rock or something?" Trip asked, puzzled.

"What did they take?" Monkey asked, catching on quicker.

Ben's shoulders sagged. "Different meds. Anti-anxiety pills, some sedatives...just a lot of different things."

"So much for your inventory," Trip said. "Do you need help cleaning up the rest?"

"No, I got it," Ben said. "So, what happened here?"

Monkey and Trip looked at each other, and Trip blew a lungful of air through her cheeks. "Can we talk inside?"

* * *

><p>Wren had left the pile of bits and pieces on Ben's workbench, like an offering to some mech god. Monkey was picking scraps out of it, dividing what was useful and what was trashed beyond salvage.<p>

"Intentionally?" Ben asked. "Are you sure Geoff didn't—"

"Been down that road already," Monkey said. "I don't think the kid did it."

"Okay, but that opens up a whole mess of other problems." Ben kneaded the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. "Okay, so, someone sabotages your bike at the town entrance. No one sees this because...?"

"Maybe it happened when the turbine was going up?" Trip asked.

"Someone should still have been on watch, though," Ben said.

"You can see the turbine from the tower. I'm willing to bet whoever was there was watching it go back up."

"Still worth checking, though," Ben said. "So, someone who knew enough about bikes to sabotage it. Do we want to think that they were trying to kill him?"

Monkey tossed a bit of something or other at the waste bin with more force than necessary. "Probably."

"That's crazy. This is crazy," Trip said, hearing herself repeat as if that would make the others see how true it was. "Why would anyone want to do that?"

"Well, there are certain...people...who aren't exactly..." Ben seemed unable to finish.

"Rose," Monkey said, and threw another bolt at the growing trash pile.

"I don't think Rose knows which end of the bike is the front, much less how to cut a brake line," Ben said.

"Any of your team might," Trip thought out loud. "But they were all there putting the turbine blade up. I guess the question is, who _wasn't_ there?"

"I was too far away to tell," Ben said.

Monkey braced his hands on his knees and thought. "I don't know most of the people in town, so I wouldn't know, but I don't think I saw the bridge kid, or the weird kid. Marla wasn't there, either, not that it matters."

"By 'the weird kid,' you mean Neil?"

"Yeah."

"And by 'bridge kid'..."

Ben sat up straighter. "Oh. Oh, I hope not. That's all we need."

Monkey returned to sorting the bits and bobs Wren left for him.

Trip looked back and forth between them, trying to pull whatever they weren't saying out of thin air. "Mark wouldn't, would he? What am I missing?"

"Half of the town could have skipped it, and we wouldn't know to look for them," Ben said. "Let's not jump to conclusions."

"Fine," Monkey said, although he didn't make it sound like it was fine.

"Why would Mark do that?"

"We're not saying he did," Ben said.

Trip didn't like any of it, but suggesting that Mark, or Rose, or anyone she knew by name hated Monkey enough to sabotage his bike was beyond her. "Mark's just weird. I don't think he's dangerous."

"He kept me at the perimeter for two hours once," Monkey said, almost blandly. "Kept yelling at me to prove I wasn't a mech that just _looked_ human. Two hours."

Trip made an unimpressed noise. "Well, maybe he didn't recognize you, and we teach them to be cautious."

"He knew who I was," he said. "It was damn near freezing that day, and it was raining. Two _hours_ in the rain. He only let me in when Geoff showed up and asked him what the hell he was doing."

"Still, that just proves he's obnoxious, not a murderer."

Monkey looked at her. "People don't always deserve the benefit of the doubt."

"Not everyone," she said. "But I know these people."

He left that unchallenged, and way down, in the part of her that whispered she ought to know better, Trip started to wonder.

"Do me a favor," Ben said to Monkey. "Don't go accusing anyone. Just...leave the bike here—I'll take care of it, or get it running well enough so you can get it back to the canyon."

"How long would that take?" Monkey asked.

Ben tried to draw numbers out of the air. "A few days? I'll have some of my team work on it, and I'll get the council meeting postponed so we can start tonight."

"You said you had stuff to do at home?" Trip said.

Monkey stood and tossed everything, supposed good bits and all, into the trash. "Yeah, I still need to get there. I'll just go on foot." He looked to Ben. "I don't have much to pay you with, unless you want scrap."

Ben smiled. "Consider it my thanks for saving our lives the other day."

"You fought," Monkey pointed out.

"You didn't give me the Cloud to fight. You told me to get my son and go."

Trip hadn't known that part, and she looked at Monkey in surprise that wasn't totally deserved.

"Don't mention it," Monkey said. "It's just what happened."

"This is my way of repaying you, anyway," Ben said. "Go ahead and bring it around the side and I can get started."

Monkey lurched up off the stool and went back outside, and it was only after he left that Trip realized how much space he took up in the room. She watched him through the window as he carefully eased the bike up and around the side of Ben's workshop. She thought she heard him swear, rougher than he would have in her presence, as the front wheel almost fell off completely.

"Your father would have liked him," Ben said.

"Dad would have thrown a fit," Trip said, and laughed. "Those tattoos."

Ben chuckled. "Well, your father had a few of his own."

"He did _not_."

"Not in places you ever saw. And your mother—"

Trip shrieked and clapped her hands over her ears.

The garage door started to life on the far side of the workshop, and Ben went over to help Monkey guide the bike into the open bay. "Watch it," Monkey said, about an hour too late.

When they'd gotten the bike into place, they started making a short list of the most critical pieces, what it would take to get the bike running again.

"So, maybe four days," Ben said. "Can you do without it for that long?"

"Sure. I've had worse."

"I don't doubt it. Keys?"

Monkey had almost forgotten them. He offered the key ring slowly, as if parting with them was harder than leaving the actual bike behind, but eventually dropped them into Ben's palm. "Take care of her."

As an afterthought, he jerked his head at Trip. "And take care of _her_."

"Would you quit trying to hand me off?" Trip said. "I don't need him—or you—to take care of me."

"How's your elbow?" he asked.

It hurt like hell, after helping him push the bike all the way through Liberty. "Fine."

Monkey gave her a knowing, exasperated look, and turned back to Ben. "It'll take me the rest of the day to get back. Send a dragonfly when you're done?"

"Will do."

Monkey turned to go. "Let's try this again, huh?"

"Coming," Trip said, but Ben cleared his throat.

"Can I take a look at your face? Your stitches are a little ratty."

Without thinking, Trip pressed filthy, raw fingertips to her cheek, and Ben sighed. "And we might as well disinfect it again."

Monkey caught her eye and indicated the door with his thumb. "Half of what I packed up is scattered on the road, so I'll be down there starting over."

"Don't leave before I can see you off."

"Wouldn't dare."

Monkey gazed at his maimed bike for several seconds, seeming earthbound and forlorn. Then he gave Trip more or less the same look, and turned and walked out.

Trip hadn't even realized she was holding her breath until she released it. "What did—_ow_, Ben!"

"You are utterly ridiculous," he said, and wiped her cheek with disinfectant. "And insane, and half blind to the things you don't expect to see. You are so your father's child."

"Thanks for that," Trip said. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"No, I'm just rambling."

Then he flipped her hair in her face—he hadn't since she was a child, since she was as high as his waist and he and her father were close friends, and the sound of them laughing was never far off. It meant the same thing now as it had then: that she had done something adorable, and potentially a little stupid, and Trip felt her ears burn.

She didn't ask again, and he finished re-dressing her wound without ever really answering.

* * *

><p>The second time Monkey tried to leave that day, he lingered. Wren gave him extra berth, always within arm's reach of Geoff in case Monkey suddenly changed his mind and tried to launch him from the bridge.<p>

"You can stop that," he said, as she circled around Geoff, keeping herself squarely between them like a guard mech. "I said I was sorry."

"No you didn't."

How so much attitude was packed into such a tiny, ordinary girl, he'd never know. She must save it up for outbursts like these, like a violent storm after weeks of dry weather. "Yes, I did."

"No. You changed your mind, but you didn't apologize."

"It's okay, Wren," Geoff said, but she scowled at him.

Monkey found a half-crushed pastry in the dust, wiped it on his pant leg, and stuffed it into his bag.

"Are you going to _eat_ that?" Wren asked, horrified.

He found another bolt from the bike, an empty water canister, and something that looked vaguely mech, but could have been anything. The water canister he kept. "Sure. It's just got...more fiber."

"Dirt is not fiber!" Wren exclaimed. "It's just dirt!"

There were blood splatters, too. Monkey rubbed those into the dirt with his foot until they were buried. "Will you quit bothering me if I say I'm sorry?"

Wren considered the offer. "Maybe."

"Enough, Wren," Geoff said. "Jeez. You're gonna make him mad."

Monkey scattered the dust from his pants and stood. "Geoff," he said, as non-threatening as he could manage.

"Yeah?"

Monkey tried hard not to see the faint fear in the kid's eyes. "Sorry. Of course you didn't do a damn thing to the bike."

"N-no," Geoff said, abruptly falling all over himself in embarrassment. "Don't worry about it—it's okay. You could have died, so..." He blinked rapidly, very aware that Monkey towered over him without even trying, and was twice his width. "Forget about it. I don't even care. _Jeez_, Wren!"

Monkey knelt down to Geoff's tiny protector. "There. Happy?"

Wren grinned right in his face, and didn't say another word.

"Did I miss something?" Trip asked. She came down the bridge, her face bright after its recent scrubbing. "This took longer than Ben expected. Sorry."

"Just leaving," Monkey said. "I think we're all good here."

"Good." Trip smiled and winced simultaneously, and very suddenly, Monkey remembered that he had to get home as soon as possible.

"Geoff, Wren, go back to the watchtower to wave me off, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah. I have to check on the dragonflies," Geoff said, fully understanding they were dismissed. "Come on," he hissed, when Wren lingered. He grabbed her hand and took them both back to the tower.

"_You_," Monkey said, and jabbed a finger in Trip's direction.

Her face pinched. "What did I do?"

Monkey hadn't had enough time, even before the accident, and now everything was lurching forward without him. He didn't know any more than he had that morning, and with the added bonus of someone trying to kill him, urgency crashed through his thoughts, pulling him away with stabs of energy.

Trip stood, waiting.

"Listen," he said, quietly. "I want you to be careful."

"You too—" she said, just repeating him, but he grabbed hold of her shoulder gently.

"_Listen_," he said again. "For once, listen. Be careful. I have a few things I need to do, but I'll be back. Try not to trust every goddamn person who walks up to you, okay?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not a child. And I'm not an idiot."

"No, Trip. God, no. I just— Promise me you'll think. Promise you'll watch for anything strange, okay? Something's not right here."

"You're being paranoid."

"You know someone tried to kill me this morning, right?"

She looked away, back to the place where it had taken every ounce of his willpower to crash the bike. "I still can't believe—"

"You don't have a choice."

He almost asked her to come with him, but he needed time, and there were favors to call in. "I can deal with mechs. People—this sneaking around crap—I'm not good with. I can't help you here."

"I don't know what I'm doing, either," Trip said. "But okay. I get it. Go take care of whatever it is."

"You sure?"

She smiled at him, so tired it was lopsided. "I trust you. And I'll come see you if I get bored."

He almost, almost let his hand go to her face, to push her hair out of her eyes so he could see them, but he shouldered his bag instead. "You be safe," he said. "I'll look for the dragonflies."

"I'll send them," she said, a little late, and he wondered if she saw his hand move after all.

He didn't turn back on his way out of the city. He knew he'd be able to see her as far as the first turn, but he could imagine her after that, still waiting for a few more minutes, to see him further down the road, just a speck by the time he reached open ground. She'd climb the watchtower with Geoff and Wren, and see him fade into the wasteland.

But he couldn't stop imagining the shadows he left behind, writhing near her, near Ben and the others. Something dark, nipping at the edges of their precious, fairy tale city.

He promised himself he'd only be a week. Ten days at the most, and then he'd be right back.

* * *

><p>The council meeting was postponed, and Ben didn't want or need her in the workshop, so Trip had finally run out of excuses not to repair her EMP. She set out her father's tools, a little reverently, and sat down to take her first good look at it.<p>

Monkey was not especially good with delicate equipment. There hadn't been time to tell him that force wasn't exactly a requirement when discharging the EMP. Then again, there hadn't been any chance for half-measures against the scorpion, and the EMP's casing was tattered metal. She picked it apart, slowly peeling back the shards until the power cell was visible.

After that, there was no real need to think. She replaced all the pieces mechanically, her mind a dozen other places.

The break-in at Ben's clinic, the mech attack, the dog in the alley. Whispers of the enslaved, still suffering, months after Pyramid. The fear that someone had been crazy enough to go back, to pull something out of that place and re-engineer it to their purpose, whatever it was.

And Monkey's bike.

She snipped some frayed wire and carefully reconnected it, her breath close enough to warm the metal.

Most people in Liberty didn't have the kind of tools that they'd need to cut a brake line that cleanly. A kitchen knife would leave rugged edges as it was sawed back and forth. Scissors were simply too weak, and would warp around the wires. The only thing Trip could think of was bolt cutters, and there weren't many sets in Liberty. Ben had some in his shop, and a few of his crew might. Trip eased the cover back over the EMP and started to wind in the tiny screws.

She left two of them undone and got up abruptly from the table.

She had the roster for the watchtower, and Ben had a point: whoever was there should have seen someone creeping near the bridges, or at least heard him crossing over to Monkey's bike.

Trip pulled the schedule from her databand and flipped through to last night's watch, and stopped on the names.

Early that evening, it was Mark. They'd seen him on their way back from the perimeter check. He should have been relieved at five by Carl, but Carl had called off sick, and Mark had taken a double shift.

His name was there twice, right in a row, overlapping the time the turbine went up by a few good hours on either side.

Trip didn't remember grabbing either, but she was suddenly standing with the half-finished EMP in one hand and the butter knife in the other, headed for Mark's.

* * *

><p>Mark was on patrol with Nash, just their usual walkthrough of the watchtowers and the main levels of the city. Trip double- and triple-checked her databand as she walked to make sure the schedule hadn't changed. Mark should be gone for another hour, at least. It was enough time to find a pair of bolt cutters.<p>

Trip made sure to stick to the lesser-populated parts of town, where the walkways went under catwalks, or canopies would keep people from recognizing her from the upper levels. She pried the back panel off the EMP again and pulled a few connectors out of place, and snapped the cover back on, lopsided. It was a poor excuse for stopping by, but it might work.

Mark lived in a nondescript house fairly close to the watchtower, but not visible from it. Trip paused outside and tried to keep her hands from shaking. She had never broken into anyone's home before—never had the need to.

"Mark? Are you home?" She banged his door for good measure, in case anyone saw her, but no one so much as peeked down the road. "Mark?"

She jiggled the door handle, not at all surprised that he locked it. Trip looked up and down the street, just in case, and jammed the knife behind the latch and pulled back out. She pushed down on the handle at the same time and, after a few seconds of careful negotiations, eased the latch out of place and the door swung in. She opened it just enough to slip inside, then closed it gently behind her.

Trip had only been to Mark's home a few times before, and there wasn't much to remember. He had the same essentials that every Liberty resident had, but they all tried to add their own touches, like Marla's vain attempts to dress up a metal basin with doilies, or Neil's need to cover every flat surface with beakers. Mark had nothing, absolutely nothing, and the emptiness of it made her feel uneasy.

She set the EMP on his table and tried to think of all the places where Mark might keep a bolt cutter. The drawers were the most obvious, and she started pawing through them, scattering papers and tools as she went. She cleared all the drawers on one side of the room, and was about to move to the other when she thought of the console. If there was any history of Mark looking up information on motorcycles, it would be there.

Trip made a few cursory guesses at the password but failed each time, and had to force herself to stop after the first five. There were limits to the number of times she could try before the machine automatically locked for an hour, and if Mark saw that, he'd know someone had been here.

Trip moved to the other side of the room and resumed opening drawers. This was the kitchen side, and most of what she found was hand-me-down pots and pans, some dented beyond reasonable belief, and she started to wonder how he didn't starve.

She slammed the drawer shut on a collection of odd cutlery and opened the next when the front door creaked open, and she cursed brutally.

Mark stood in the entrance and looked more tired than bewildered, and not at all as angry as she'd expect. Trip could only imagine how she looked, her hand halfway in an open drawer, Mark's home well and truly looted.

He closed the door behind him, and Trip swallowed down panic.

"Hi," he said, a little cautiously. He set his rucksack on the table and eyed her. "Um...I don't know...what I should be asking, exactly?"

"I can explain," Trip said, and immediately felt ridiculous. "I mean...the EMP."

Mark considered her with far less suspicion than she'd earned. "You need help with it? Oh." He picked the EMP up and turned it over. "Well, you've made a mess of it."

"Yeah, well, it won't hold a charge. I tried everything, and it's just...dead, or something." Trip fidgeted madly in front of the half-open drawer. When he flipped the EMP over to pry the back cover off, she pushed the drawer closed with her foot.

Mark hadn't noticed. He peered into the EMP. "Did Monkey break this?"

"Yeah," Trip said, and wanted so badly to wipe the smirk off Mark's face. "I guess so."

"Figures. Well, you didn't connect the terminals, for one," he said, and started rummaging through his toolkit. "That helps. It also helps to use a screwdriver, instead of a fork." He glanced up at her. "That is the drawer you were going through, right?"

Trip blushed, even though it was a ruse, just for giving Mark the opportunity to look at her like that. "Oh...I—yeah. I don't know where you keep everything."

Mark spread everything out on his table, and Trip felt obligated to join him as he made the final fixes to the EMP, completing the last steps of the repairs. After ten minutes spent rewiring parts that Trip was sure were perfectly fine before—and probably broken now—he handed it back to her, flushed with pride that made Trip feel guilty. "There you go."

"Thanks." She clipped it to her belt and stood to go. "Sorry for walking in like that. I didn't mean to pry."

"No, no." Mark smiled, as if she'd done him a great favor by breaking into his house. "You're welcome to visit whenever you want."

Trip smiled back and began drifting toward the door. "Sorry, again. I'll catch you later?"

"Just a sec." Mark had seen something across the room, maybe another drawer Trip didn't manage to close. He stood slowly and turned toward her. "Did you try to get into my console?"

She could see the vidscreen behind him, still blinking, waiting for the password. If he'd been gone for hours, it should have defaulted to standby to conserve power. Trip could have kicked herself as Mark's expression began to darken. "Did you?" he asked again. "I mean, I assume you had a good reason...?"

"I..." Trip started, then pressed her mouth tight before continuing. "You said...you heard something about Monkey," she said quietly. "I don't... I can't imagine what it is, and I wanted to see for myself..."

"You could have asked," Mark said, but the energy that had been gathering in his face emptied. "I wanted to show you."

Trip shrugged, embarrassed for the easiness of the lie, embarrassed for both of them. "I just... I don't know, Mark. I'm so sorry I even tried. I just...don't know if I should be worried. Please, I _am_ sorry."

He gazed at her, and Trip smiled nervously, as if she were asking for a favor. "What did you find?" she asked. "Can you show me?"

Something in her voice did exactly what it needed, and Mark waved her over. "Okay. You should have asked me, though."

"Sorry."

Mark sighed and went to his console. "Hang on."

He logged in too quickly for Trip to catch the password. He pulled something up and Trip joined him to look over the data.

There were dozens of messages from other settlements, cataloged by date. The audio data was rendered as text and stored according to whatever system Mark had devised. Trip was a little surprised at all of it, but Mark merely scrolled through the mess to show her a few things in particular. "Do you remember when we came here?"

"From Pyramid?" Mark had been enslaved for only a few months; his scars were shallow, but still there. Trip often didn't see them under his hair. "Yeah, I guess."

"The story was everywhere, about what you did to Pyramid. There are hundreds of messages from the months right after that. Probably thousands, but I couldn't get them all."

Trip saw them all as they zipped by, a little awestruck. "Oh. But what does that have to do with Monkey?"

"People were asking who did it, who freed everyone."

"Okay?"

"Your name, obviously. And Monkey's."

Trip shrugged. "So?"

Mark highlighted a few files for her. "Then the stories started coming in."

None of it surprised her. A man, living alone in the wasteland. Appearing at random to scavenge food or fuel, and vanishing again. Sometimes taking on mechs single-handed, and winning.

"So?" Trip asked again, after skimming the first few. "I've seen him do that."

"Okay," Mark said. "But we've seen him be violent against people, too. I mean, he went after Geoff today."

"Only because he'd almost just died," Trip said. The adrenaline had subsided, and her patience was wearing thin. "Is this all you have?"

Mark bristled. "He doesn't belong here, Trip. He makes you do crazy stuff. That scorpion—"

"You think he _asked_?" she demanded. "He yelled at me, too, so don't you start."

"And...he wanders, at night," Mark said. "No one knows where he goes. Maybe he finds a way out of town, maybe he's talking to slavers. He could sell a way into Liberty, sell us all off."

"He wouldn't."

"Then where does he go at night?" Mark asked. "Who wanders like that? I bet he's checking out the defenses, or maybe he sabotaged the perimeter when he was with you, and he's just waiting for a chance..."

"This is ridiculous," Trip said, so angry her voice was wound tight. "What would he even do with the money?"

"I don't _know_," Mark said. "Buy shoes?"

Trip snapped the console off in front of him, and Mark blinked in surprise. "Forget it," she hissed. "This is stupid. Monkey saved all of you from Pyramid, remember?"

"You did that."

"I didn't do it alone. Where do you get off, saying this crap about him?"

Mark hesitated. "Look, there's something else."

"I don't care." Trip stormed to the door. "I don't care, and I don't want to hear it."

She had the door halfway open when Mark slammed the palm of his hand on the table, and she stopped.

"Then at least check his house," he said, leaning over the table with desperate eagerness. "You think you know him? Check that house you gave him."

Trip didn't turn back to him, but she started to let the door drift shut on her. "Why?"

"He doesn't use it. He goes wandering, but he doesn't come back to it. Or if he does, he doesn't stay. You'll see if you go there."

"This is pathetic," Trip snarled, and yanked the door open again.

Mark called after her as she left, and his voice rang out into the street. "Check his house. Then tell me I'm still wrong."

* * *

><p>Trip went home after that. Ben might have had some good advice, or Marla would have enough pastries to drown out fears with sugar and warmth, but Trip wanted home, she wanted her own bed. It was enough for one day—it was beyond enough.<p>

By the time she reached the center of town, she was almost jogging, and she very nearly missed the man as she passed through.

He stood by the fountain, his back to her. Trip didn't recognize him, but he could have been any of Ben's crew, or one of the new arrivals. He must have heard her footsteps, but he didn't react, even when she tripped over a metal dustbin and the noise screamed into the night. She quickly righted it, her ears ringing, and skirted around the edge of the square to avoid disturbing him further. Trip had just reached the other side of the square, near the street that would lead her home, when she heard the man singing.

It was an old song, from forever ago. The low, steady humming was hauntingly familiar, and Trip edged closer, just to make out the words. The man tilted his face skyward and she saw in the starlight that his slaver scars were deep, old marks that pressed in his skin at the temples. He swayed back and forth, rocking from toe to heel and back, never once looking away from the sky.

Trip could hear him now, and she stopped a dozen steps away, shadowed under the entryway to the war room.

"...to you," the man sang, quietly, so sad that Trip's heart ached. "Happy birthday...to...you. Happy birth...d..."

He was pantomiming something with his hands, and Trip left the shadows to see. She was well within sight of him now, but the man carried on, his eyes overhead. His hands were out in front of him and, as Trip watched, he began to mimic handing out pieces of cake, or presents—something. The vacant smile never changed.

A gate clanged shut down the road, and the man jolted. His hands fell limp to his sides, and he stared at the fountain for a few moments before turning away. He almost ran into Trip, but peered through her as if she were smoke, and she stepped aside to let him pass. He shuffled off, back home, muttering softly to himself.

Trip's breathing felt loud enough to wake the town. She stood where the man had been and looked first at the fountain, then the sky. There was nothing there now, if there had been. There were no visions: only the fountain gurgling quietly at her feet, and weak clouds passing over the stars.

His presence lingered there, as if he'd been standing in one place for hours, and Trip shuddered. She looked to open sky and saw, for the first time in months, true, bright stars, and could only think that something in her world had fractured, like tiny cracks spreading out in glass, and she couldn't tell how far they reached.


	7. Conspiracy Theory

Seven: Conspiracy Theory

* * *

><p>Three days after Monkey left, everything seemed to break, one bit of disaster falling right after the other. The second and fourth hydraulic pumps cracked and sprayed a hundred gallons of water into fine mist that collapsed back into the waterfall. Trip came dangerously close to drowning trying to repair them with one arm still painfully stiff, and Ben had hauled her up by the scruff of her neck and called her a dozen kinds of foolish before sending Nash and Quinn down instead.<p>

Trip would have spent hours pacing along the cliff edge in shoes that squelched beseechingly in her wake, watching the repairs, but the perimeter alarms began screaming on her fourth circuit, and she just barely beat Ben in reaching the watchtower.

"Nothin'!" the guard shouted at them, as they skidded to a stop under the tower. "Not 'less it's invisible!"

"Great," Trip said. She was tired and aching and her clothes were sticky with water and sweat, and the sun was barely up.

The alarms choked off, mid-screech, and she and Ben waited, listening hard for mechs, or slaver ships, or so much as a stray dragonfly. Five minutes later, after absolutely nothing, the alarms started up again, and Trip buried her fingertips in her ears.

"I'll get Mark," Ben shouted, inches from her face. "Start checking the sensors."

"He won't come," she shouted back. "He didn't for the pumps."

"Why the hell not?"

"He's sulking!"

Ben gave her a look that meant he hadn't understood, or that he understood full well and wasn't impressed. He gave her a gentle push toward the first sensor and headed back into town, his hands pressed flat over his ears.

The alarms cut out, and Trip forced herself to take a deep breath and hold it until her lungs began to clench. She let the breath out slowly, just a bit at a time, and tried to find the strength she'd need to check the perimeter.

As soon as the last bit of air was gone, the alarms started up again, and Trip smuggled in a few particularly good curses under their racket.

* * *

><p>The alarms sounded for just about everything, to warn them of tree leaves, mosquitoes and particularly suspicious breezes. The initial panic downgraded to irritation, then a sort of condemned acceptance as Liberty adjusted to the ruckus.<p>

The perimeter scans were no use. The system's entire purpose was to tell them where the alarm originated, and by what. But the system seemed just as bewildered as they were, and the alarm tripped from a different sensor every time.

By the third hour of manually scaling the rocks, prying sensors from their hiding places and resetting them with Mark's help, Trip's head was ringing, even when the alarm was off, and she could feel blood in her ears. Graham trailed along behind them, his father's oversized hearing protectors clamped down on his head when the alarms were ringing. When they weren't, he gathered stones, collecting and counting them in his hands until the alarm sounded again, then dumped them all and started fresh. He talked, from one instant of silence to the last, as if consciously padding the alarms with more noise.

"—and Wren said that the ones at Pyramid were twice as big and five time more scary and they made hissing and crashing noises like thunderstorms but I said, were you there, and she said no, 'cause she wasn't, and Geoff wasn't either, but he doesn't pretend. And Dad said that we should forget some things like mechs and monsters and stuff but it's hard because they're so big and fast, and the one Monkey fought was _fast_—"

The alarms started up again, blessedly, and Graham obediently snapped the plastic muffs over his ears.

Mark moved mechanically from one sensor to the next, not registering Graham's presence, not meeting Trip's eyes as he passed each sensor to her. They hung from the rock face from picks and harnesses, only barely able to reach some of the sensors even then. Monkey never let it look this hard.

The alarms whined into nothing again, and Mark said something in the short silence between the ruckus and Graham's chatter.

Trip popped the foam plugs from her ears. "What?"

"I said, we should just reset the system!" Mark shouted, from three feet away.

Trip reeled away from him. "Jeez, I'm right here! And the system will be down for the rest of the day if we do."

"It would be better than this!"

Trip retrieved the ear plugs from their strings and began shoving them back into place. "Just figure out what's setting it off."

"What do you think I'm doing?" he demanded.

"Not nearly enough!" she bellowed, but he had turned away, half-deaf already, and the back of his head took the brunt of her rage.

She wished with every ounce of energy that they'd been able to find someone, anyone, but Mark, who was still sulking with an intensity that would have scandalized even Geoff. She'd even accept Neil at this point, who'd take one look at the entire situation and let it go to hell while he poked animals with sticks.

"—fast like mechs like dogs," Graham continued, as if he'd never been interrupted, "and I've seen those because Dad and I went lots and lots of places after Pyramid came here and said that we weren't safe unless we were quiet, and I was so quiet, I was mouse-quiet, like this—" He made whiskers with his fingers. "—quiet like that, and the metal dog didn't see us, because we were quiet."

"Graham, sweetie?" Trip called down. "Go visit Marla. I'm sure she's lonely."

Graham wriggled his fingers around his mouth. "No, she's not, 'cause Neil is there visiting, 'cause she said he never does, so he's there now, and he smells like Dad's smelly bottles and I don't like him."

It shouldn't have been so hard not to laugh, but it was. "That's not nice."

Graham grinned at her, and the alarm started up again just as Mark freed the next sensor and handed it down.

This one had been reset, too. Trip had to plug them in, one at a time, to manually override the settings. It was slow work.

Mark pointed at the sensor in her hand and she nodded to mean this one—the eighth reset sensor out of fourteen so far. He reached down to take the sensor from her, and she just barely registered the look on his face. "What?" she shouted, but he turned away and busied himself setting the sensor in the rock.

They clambered down, less graceful than either of them would be able to manage without the screaming noise between their ears.

Graham hopped along behind them, collecting stones again and casting them over the edge. Trip mouthed something at him, which he took to mean that he should be careful, or not go too far, or to keep the hearing protectors over his ears, and he nodded for any and all of them, and bent down to pick up another stone.

The next sensor wasn't as high as the last, and Mark found good enough footholds to reach it without needing the picks. He had the sensor out and to Trip just as the alarm cut off again.

"Twenty-two," Graham said immediately. "Five more than—"

"Didn't you just check these?" Mark demanded, but it was to Trip. "You just did the perimeter."

Trip reset the sensor—nine out of fifteen. "Yeah, and they were fine."

"With him?"

There wasn't anyone but Monkey who'd have made Mark's lip curl like that, and Trip threw the sensor back at him. "Monkey wouldn't even know how to do this. He doesn't even use the vidscreens when he's here."

Mark almost fumbled the sensor—it danced to the ends of his fingers before he got a good grip on it.

She had passed Monkey's house on the way down to the hydraulics that morning, but there was nothing to pull her in. The house was shut up and dark, gathering shadows to it, but it was supposed to be that way when Monkey was gone. But she didn't really stop to look at it, all the same.

"And even if he could, he wouldn't," Trip continued. "Why would he?"

Mark didn't answer.

It was almost harder, with his scorn rattling around in his head, loud enough to hear without needing words. Trip extended her arm, stopping just shy of a straight line, waiting to see where the pain set in. She was lucky, Ben said, but she'd had so little luck lately, it was more compensation.

Mark grunted as he struggled to set the sensor back into its brackets in the rock, and she folded her arm back to her side.

"You don't _know_," Trip said, willing Mark to face her, at least. "You weren't there. Monkey and I...Monkey and I made it that whole way, to get to Pyramid. Do you have any idea..." Mark would know the way back, the trek from Pyramid that not all of them had survived, but he didn't know how hard it was to fight their way there, just the two of them, and Pigsy, for the last of it. There wasn't a way to explain.

"Did you know," Graham piped up, out of nowhere, "that Wren can only hold her breath underwater for thirty seconds, but I can do forty?"

"Okay, Graham," Trip said. "That's very good. Go find your dad, okay?"

"Once I did forty-two—"

"Shut up!" Mark shouted at him, and Graham shrank back.

Trip put her hand on Graham's head protectively. "What's wrong with you?" she asked, and Mark slammed the sensor back into place. "Graham didn't do anything."

Mark jumped back to the ground and hit it hard enough to scatter stones. When he stood, Trip felt as if he'd taken a step toward her, pushing her farther off the path, but he hadn't moved.

"I'm telling everyone," he said, just loud enough for Trip to hear his voice go gravelly. "I'm telling them what I found out about your stupid ape boyfriend. If you aren't smart enough to listen—"

"You are even _dumber_ than you look!" Trip shouted in abrupt fury, and Graham moved away from both of them, his hair knotting and snapping on Trip's fingers. "You really think Monkey did any of this? After what he did for you?"

"What did he do for me?" Mark asked. "Come on, what?"

"What did...? We _freed_ you, you fucking moron!"

Mark went perfectly still. "You didn't even see Pyramid."

"I saw i—"

Mark jabbed the pick at her, but too far to be threatening. "No, you _didn't_. You didn't see a goddamn thing."

Trip had the sudden, suffocating feeling that she'd had this conversation a hundred times since Pyramid, always too hard to put into words. She saw it in the enslaved's eyes, in the way they peered over their shoulders at nothing and woke too slowly from sleep.

"Then tell me," she said. "What didn't I see?"

The alarms started before Mark had a chance to answer, if he meant to. He unsnapped his harness and dropped it right there in the middle of the path, and walked away without another word, without so much as meeting her eyes, and left Trip standing with her databand blazing and the alarms shrieking all around her.

* * *

><p>Hours later, Trip finished with the last sensors, and the city was quiet again. She stumbled back home, every part of her like stone, grinding against everything else. And it was with very, very bad humor that she allowed Ben to grab her good elbow and turn her in the direction of the clinic as he caught her outside her door.<p>

"Stitches," he said briskly, and she let him lead her.

He deemed the wound healed enough for a thick cotton bandage to suffice, and she felt herself go tingly with relief as he put the needles away. The bandage was cool and soft, even though its adhesive grabbed at her skin, and Trip poked it experimentally.

"By the way," he said, conversationally, "has someone been reinforcing Graham's vocabulary?"

Trip couldn't imagine what that meant. "His vocabulary?"

"Well, twenty minutes ago, he called Nash a..." Ben paused and pretended to hunt for the exact phrase. "...a 'fucking moron'..."

"Oh," Trip said.

"...and, while undoubtedly true, we don't like to mention it. Not in front of him, anyway." Ben tried so hard not to smile that he was squinting. "Any idea where Graham picked that one up?"

"W—"

"And more importantly, who deserved to be called that in his presence? Aside from the obvious."

Trip shrugged and eased the kinks out of her legs. "He left me to finish recalibrating the perimeter myself, so..."

"Mark did what? Tell me he wasn't that stupid."

"Mark's always that stupid. But at least the alarms have stopped."

"That boy..." Ben said, then gave up on it. "Any idea what caused it?"

Trip hadn't had so much as a spare moment to go over what little data there was. "Not yet. But the system's good now."

Ben scrubbed his fingers over his eyelids. "Okay. Keep at it."

There wasn't any choice but to, unless she wanted to lose another day scaling rocks and beating new numbers into the entire sensor array. "Will do." She massaged the sides of her head, thinking. "Did Nash box Graham's ears? It would be my fault, if he had."

"No," Ben said, and smiled wearily. "Nash laughed, and taught him a few more words I'd rather he hadn't. _I_ boxed his ears."

Trip winced. "And after all those alarms. It was my fault, though."

"He should know better. But if you want the same..."

Ben lifted his hands to her head, and Trip ducked away. "No thanks. Is Graham grounded?"

"Sort of. He was running a slight fever when he came back, so he's in bed. At least, he's supposed to be. He can crack any code I put on the vidscreens, and I don't know how." Ben smiled. "I can barely find the on button, sometimes."

"It's labeled 'on,'" Trip said helpfully. "Let me know when Graham's tall enough to reach the perimeter sensors. I could put him to work."

"Will do."

"So," she said, and hopped down. "How's the bike?"

"It's..." Ben made a face between panic and bewilderment. "It's a mess."

They crossed over to the garage, really just walking from one room to the next, and Ben pulled the tarp from the bike. If at all possible, it looked worse than it had a few days ago. It had been crunched together, all its parts mashed up to fit into a smaller space, but now the bike was skinned and gutted, alone in the garage bay. The pieces Ben could identify and salvage were laid out neatly on the table. The rest, and there were an alarming number of them, lay in a heap on the concrete.

Ben set a hand on the bike in sympathy. "We can get parts pretty easily, but it's going to take time and expertise to get it working again. We've been shorthanded, with the hydraulics going offline."

Trip ran her finger along the smooth edges of the bike, what few were left. She felt sorry for it, having carried them so far, so well, to end up this soulless metal frame. "I can update Monkey on the next dragonfly. If you can get the basics done..."

"We can manage that," Ben said. "But we're not specialists. We make do, mostly."

"That's good enough."

Trip knelt near the front wheel, as Monkey had after the crash, and pulled the loose brake lines free. "I thought...something like bolt cutters, maybe?"

Ben frowned. "Yeah, it would have to be something like that."

"Do you have any? We can—" Trip motioned holding the bolt cutters up to the wire. "—test them, see if they make the same kind of cuts."

"Hm." Ben gazed at the brake lines thoughtfully. "Sure. Hang on."

Trip waited as he rummaged through the garage. He checked one drawer, made a displeased noise, and turned to another. After three minutes of listening to him open drawers and cabinets and bang them closed, Trip sat down. "Missing?"

"What?" Ben poked his head up over his workbench. "Why do you sound like you expected that?"

"No, just..." Trip listened to him rattle through his tools some more. "I thought, if Mark did it, he would have some, and if yours are missing..."

"Oh, Trip, please tell me you didn't march over there and accuse him."

Ben was so thoroughly alarmed that she turned to meet his eyes. "No. At least, I don't think he knows I went over there for that. At any rate, I didn't find them."

"Warn me next time you're attempting espionage," he said, and went back to grumbling. "I swear they're here."

"What if they were taken in the break-in?"

"Break-ins."

Trip played the word back over in her head a few times before hearing the difference. "Break-_ins_? When was the second?"

"Last night." Ben grunted and lifted something impossibly heavy from the floor to see if the bolt cutters had fallen under it. "But only drugs, again. No bolt cutters."

She caresses the bike's front wheel with her fingertips. "How do you know? It could have been the same person. We could post someone outside your clinic...wait for the thief to return..."

"No, Trip. Leave it."

"What?" It was a surprise to hear him dismiss it that quickly. "Why not?"

"It's not related to the sabotage. And it could have been done with something other than bolt cutters. Heavy-duty wire cutters, maybe. Anything. We don't keep track of them."

She stood. "But it could be the person who sabotaged Monkey!"

"You're chasing shadows," Ben said. "We'll find him, but not this way. Leave it for now."

He came back over to the bike and began to pull the tarp back over it.

"You didn't find the bolt cutters, did you?" Trip asked, sounding triumphant without feeling it.

"They're around here somewhere. Trust me."

"Yeah," she said. "I can do that."

She helped him pull the tarp back over the bike. She tucked the corners under it gently, as if that might soothe it.

"Hey, Ben?"

"Yeah."

"Is there...something you aren't telling me?"

To his credit, Ben looked properly bewildered. "Plenty of stuff, I guess. Unless you want to know every ailment and broken bone that comes through my door."

"No." Trip wanted the answer to be nothing so badly that she almost didn't ask again, but Ben was gazing at her with faint suspicion and concern, and it echoed back to her. "I mean, is there something about Liberty you aren't telling me? Something about the enslaved?"

Ben's expression went utterly flat, all the emotion siphoned elsewhere, and fear pinched in her stomach. "Like what?" he asked.

"I don't know. Something I didn't see. Mark said I didn't see something at Pyramid." Ben didn't answer right away, and Trip asked the questions she really wanted. "Is it keeping me from helping them? Am I doing any good here at all?"

"Yes, you're doing good," Ben said, sharply. "That's enough."

"What i—"

"That's _enough_," he said again. Then, more softly, as if he were talking to Graham, he added, "Enough, Trip."

"Hello?" Geoff's voice bounced around the clinic. "Helllloooo!"

"Oh for..." Trip rolled her eyes. "Why does he do that?"

"I don't know. He's like a cat that wants to come in, but he'd rather just shout at the door than open it."

"I'll go see what he wants. Let me know if you need help with the bike?"

"I'll be re-cataloging the medications first, but I'll give you a shout later."

Trip left him to it. When she opened the door, Geoff was there, his hands cupped around his mouth.

Carl stood nearby, his fist halfway to the door, and looked decidedly sheepish when Trip walked out into the middle of his knock. "Morning'."

"I think morning was _hours_ ago," she said. It mattered, because she had felt each one. "Are you looking for Ben?"

"Yeah, the old noggin," Carl said, and made it sound like an apology. "He inside?"

Trip stepped out of his way and let Carl into the clinic. She pulled the door shut behind him before she turned to Geoff. "There is there great new thing called knocking."

"Yeah, hi," Geoff said, in lieu of answer. "I wanted to see the bike. I brought these."

He held both hands out, with two same-sized bits of mirror lying carefully in each palm. He'd molded plastic casings around them somehow, similar enough to look identical, even this close. They extended into clips that could be fitted to the bike's handles.

"Side view mirrors," he explained. "Monkey's broke right off in the accident. I think they're at the bottom of the waterfall."

"Oh." She accepted them delicately and turned each over in her hands. They were cleanly made, with all the once-rough edges filed down with surprising attention to detail. Trip bounced each in her hands lightly; they weighed the same, too. "You made these?"

"Yeah. You think they'll work?"

"I think so. How did you manage this?"

"It was easy," Geoff said, but she saw his raw hands before he hid them in his pockets.

"Thank you," Trip said. "They're awesome."

"No problem. You'll tell Monkey I did them?"

"The instant I see him again." She smiled and motioned for Geoff to stay where he was. "I'll give these to Ben. The bike's not ready for them yet, so they'll sit in the garage for a few days. Hang on."

When she came back out, Geoff was trying hard not to look too pleased, with little success. She started off as a brisk walk. "Come on. I have a question for you."

He caught up with her quickly. "What?"

"Feel like some potential mischief?"

"Almost always."

They rounded the corner at the edge of the square and headed down the walk. Trip looked behind her, as if Ben might have been following them. She lowered her voice, just in case, and Geoff leaned in eagerly to hear it. "There was a second break-in at the clinic. Ben said they only took drugs, but he can't find his bolt-cutters, and..."

"Monkey's bike," Geoff said, and she was a little embarrassed at how quickly he got there. "So whoever broke in might have taken them?"

"And might have sabotaged Monkey's bike, yeah."

Geoff would have looked more thoughtful if the smile hadn't been so mischievous. "So, how do we find him?"

"That part should be easy," Trip said, already looking for places where they could lie in wait. "You doing anything tonight?"

* * *

><p>Geoff wore the longest black sweater he could find, with sleeves that reached his first knuckles and bunched around his wrists like old snakeskin. The hood was pulled down low over his forehead, and beneath that he'd thought to add a mask that covered everything but his eyes and mouth. Every other bit of fabric on him was a dusky grey-brown that blended into just about everything.<p>

When he came around the corner like that, to disconnect from the shadows abruptly and sidle right up to her, Trip screamed and almost struck him.

"God _damn_ it, Geoff!" she whispered fiercely, after he'd peeled off the mask. "_We're _not robbing the clinic, you know?"

"Well, we can still be sneaky," he said. "Anything yet?"

Trip eased the kinks out of her back. "No. And I've been here since 8."

Geoff squatted at her side, and they peered around the slatted metal fence to the clinic. It was small and drab-looking in the dim light, but they could make out the front door and the window that had been smashed in. They couldn't see the garage entrance, but Ben had locked and bolted it before he went home for the night, and this was the thief's only way in.

To make it easier, they'd left the front door unlocked, and barely pulled to. But the few people who walked past the clinic so far didn't pay it the slightest bit of attention, save one do-gooder who saw the door ajar and tugged it shut on his way past. Trip was forced to sneak out, low to the ground as if avoiding gunfire, and set the trap again.

Geoff settled himself on the dirt. "So, just like watchtower duty, but we have to be quiet."

"Pretty much," Trip said.

"I just thought, you know, it should be more exciting. We could be after a madman." His voice tipped forward with excitement.

Trip almost snorted. "The closest thing we have to a madman is Mark, and he's just a nuisance."

"Hrm," Geoff said.

The first hour had already been a matter of watching absolutely nothing happen and easing the pins and needles from her limbs as they went to sleep in quick succession. Trip massaged her toes through her shoes, then worked up to her ankles and calves. Geoff was truly dedicated to the task at first, watching the front door for a few minutes, then the plastic window covering, then switching back, but he quickly lost interest and pulled the mask back over his face.

The nights were getting cooler already, and Trip shivered. She didn't have much of a wardrobe for stealth, so a thin jacket tossed over her usual attire had to suffice. She was probably dressed too brightly, on top of that, but Geoff didn't mention it and she didn't want to walk home and scare the would-be thief away if he saw her. So she hunched down and tried to keep all her body heat in a bubble that extended just a few inches around her, and tried to think drab thoughts.

"Not used to this, huh?" Geoff asked, and the condescension was a little grating. "You should do watchtower duty more often."

"I do it often enough," Trip said. "And I used to do it all the time, thanks. The town was a lot smaller back then."

"Yeah, okay," Geoff mumbled.

She peered at him, trying to make out where the shadows under the mask ended and where his eyes began. "Where did you get that? You don't use it on watch duty, do you? Tell me you aren't really playing games up there."

"No," Geoff said. "I got it..." He stopped there, and changed his mind. "On the road. You know."

Trip zipped her jacket up as far as it would go, and tugged the drawstrings around her chin, just in case there was warmth hiding there. "You thought it was cool?"

"No."

She tried to see his expression, but it was so hard to tell in this light. "No?"

"No," he said again, shortly.

She thought about it, really thought about it, for what might have been the first time. Geoff didn't have any scars—neither did Wren. She pressed her mouth shut, wondering, and decided to ask. "Who were you hiding from?"

"I wasn't hiding from anyone. I got it off a guy."

"'Off' him?"

Geoff's back went perfectly, unnaturally straight. "Just some guy, on the road."

"I bet it scares Wren."

Geoff glanced at her—she only knew because his eyes flashed white in the lamplight. "I don't wear it in front of Wren. I just thought it would be good to use now. I don't usually wear it."

"No..." Trip said slowly. "I bet not."

Trip concentrated on watching the clinic door for several long minutes, but nothing changed.

Every single person brought stories from the wasteland. Not everyone in Liberty was ever enslaved, not by Pyramid. But there were other things to fear, and plenty to hide from. And if you were alone, or traveling with your younger sister, things could be far, far worse.

"I've heard," she said, trying for casual and not managing it, "that there are groups of raiders out there that think masks make them anonymous, and stronger. They can do anything, be anything."

Geoff kept his opinion to himself.

"So...they could burn one settlement to the ground, wearing a mask, and the next town would have no idea who they'd let in until it was too late."

"Yeah, I guess so," Geoff said at last. "We heard some stories like that."

"But not just the raiders," Trip said. She kept the next part so quiet that she felt her own breath in her mouth. "Slavers, too. Some of the traffickers use them for the same reasons. Monkey told me."

Geoff kept his back to her, but she saw a shiver run through him.

"Did you...did you ever run into anyone doing trafficking?" she asked carefully. "Did you get the mask off one when you escaped?"

"No," Geoff said, just that.

Trip couldn't decide if putting her hand on his shoulder would scare him off or not, so she put it on the fence next to his. "No, huh?"

Geoff pulled in a breath that seemed too deep and wide for his chest, and he held it until Trip's lungs screamed on his behalf.

"Not me," he said finally. "I never did."

There were a dozen more questions, but Geoff suddenly leaned toward the break in the slats. "Look."

Trip had stopped watching, and as soon as she looked back, she noticed the man who slunk along the buildings, pausing under the deepest shadows as if to draw them into himself before carrying on. He was almost to the clinic now, and she hissed in surprise. "Damn it! Where did he come from?"

"Shh!" Geoff said, and she clamped down on the rest of it.

The man eased himself through the darkness to the front of the clinic. He peered through the plastic film and fingered the frayed tape before moving to the door. He paused, surprised, as the door swung in at the slightest touch. The man peered into the clinic nervously, then back out into the street.

"Now?" Geoff asked.

"Not yet," Trip whispered.

The man wrung his hands together in the doorway for a few seconds before twisting himself inside and closing the door behind him.

Trip and Geoff moved slowly to the door, careful to stay out of the light. They took positions on either side of the door, and listened with their ears pressed against the thin walls. He was overturning bottles and plastic bins, rattling cabinets and drawers. The racket was incredible for someone carrying out a burglary.

The plastic window covering had flipped loose in the breeze and Trip pried it up, just an inch.

She could just make out the outline of the man at Ben's cabinet, backlit by emergency lights near the floor. He rummaged through each drawer in turn, reading the labels on the bottles but not seeming to find what he wanted. The pills went scattered on the cold floor, and Trip could only imagine how much time Neil spent making them, and how long it took Ben to catalog and sort them.

The man found something he must have liked, because he crowed quietly and slipped it into his breast pocket. Before Trip could get to the door, he swung it open and nearly ran right into her. He clutched both hands to his pocket, over his heart, and scurried toward the other side of the square.

Trip stood, or tried to. Her legs were numb and clumsy after hours of being cramped under her weight. Instead of leaping up and tackling the man, as she'd intended, she stumbled forward and had a sudden suspicion that her kneecaps had vanished.

"Fuck!" she said. "Geoff, go after him!"

Geoff was already on his feet and running when the man heard them and spun to stare back in amazement and fear. After a dazed half-second, he swiveled around and took off in another direction. Geoff scrambled madly to keep up.

Trip banged her fists against her legs to jumpstart them and pushed herself forward into running.

They covered most of the first level, ducking and dodging through alleyways and vaulting over the lower gates. The man vanished briefly as he kicked himself up over a safety rail and dropped a good eight feet to the lower catwalk. Geoff stopped at the edge, slightly daunted, and Trip had enough time to catch up with him on legs that only just felt like hers again.

She grabbed hold of the rail and it squealed in her hands as she flipped over the edge and dangled, stupidly, before remembering to let go. She hit the lower walk with a clang that reverberated in the dark.

"That way!" Geoff yelled overhead.

"Come on!" Trip shouted back, and took off at a dead run in the direction he'd pointed. She slid in a patch of dry earth as she rounded the next corner, and found herself facing two gates. She had heard one snap shut seconds before, but couldn't identify which, and she vibrated with rage.

When Geoff arrived seconds later, she shoved him at the left one. "Go. Go go go." She slammed her fingers over the controls near the right gate, punched in a code, and the gate slowly, incredibly, ridiculously slowly, began to lift.

She wriggled under it, crawled back up on her elbows, and ran blind.

Trip made it all the way to the end of the street and had to stop at the dead-end to another gate. She hadn't heard this one, and she knew, without inspecting the doors on either side of the street, that she'd picked the wrong gate.

On the other street, the one she'd pushed Geoff down, she heard the distant thwack of a fist striking bone, and a split-second after, a muffled "Son of a _bitch_!"

She turned and raced back to her gate and punched in the numbers again, to get back to the other side and to Geoff.

When she reached him, Geoff was leaning against the wall behind the gate, alone, his palm pressed up against his face. He was still wearing the mask, and Trip almost ran right past him when she came through, but saw his teeth against the darkness when he grimaced at her.

"Oh...oh God _damn_ it," Trip said. "Come here. Let me—come _here_, Geoff."

"He got away."

"Yes, I noticed. Did he hit you?"

Geoff removed his hand, but there wasn't much to see yet. "Right in the face."

"I'm sorry," Trip said. "I'm sorry. I should have gone this way."

"Heads or tails," Geoff said, and winced.

"Shush."

She pulled the mask from his head. "Okay, let's...yeah, that's going to leave a mark. At least your eye isn't damaged."

"Bastard," Geoff said. "I grabbed him. Well, his arm. He just got through the gate and tripped. He spilled the pills and was trying to get them all, and I caught his arm. He punched me square in the face."

Trip pressed her fingers around his eye socket. "Does that hurt?"

"Of course it hurts! I just got punched in the face!"

"I meant...yeah, sorry. I meant, does anything feel broken?"

"How'm I supposed to know that?" Geoff tried to turn his head to look down the street. "Was that the guy who cut Monkey's brake lines?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"He didn't seem like...I don't know. He seemed...weird. Off."

Trip handed the mask back to him and stepped away. "Like how?"

Geoff looked blankly at the mask, then shoved it into his pocket. "Just...off. Like his eyes couldn't focus on me. He looked right at me, but not at me. Like at something behind me." He held up his fingers next to his head and made little waving motions. "Something was not right up there."

Trip immediately thought of the man at the fountain. "Did you recognize him?"

"No. I thought I did for a second, but it just looked like everyone else who comes here. I don't know his name." Geoff gingerly covered his injured eye with his palm. "At least I was wrong about stakeouts. That was pretty exciting."

"That was my fault," Trip said. "Sorry."

"It's not like _you_ punched me," Geoff said. "But you can owe me, if you want."

"Sure. One punch in the face, to be paid in full whenever the need arises."

Geoff smiled. "Okay."

The control panel at the gate beeped, and Trip realized she'd let it run through its automated diagnostic for opening and closing so frequently in the past few minutes. Geoff looked at it thoughtfully. "Do those things store logs of who punches in and out?"

"No," Trip said. "Everyone has the same basic codes. They change every month or so, but everyone has the same one, so it doesn't...help...us..."

She stopped to think.

"Trip?"

"Not the gates," she said slowly. "But the...oh, shit." She turned back to him. "_Shit_, Geoff, the perimeter sensors!"

"What? Ow, stop—stop shaking me, would you? I think I have a concussion."

Trip released him guiltily. "I'm going to the bridges."

"What, now?" Geoff tilted his head to the side, as if expecting motion somewhere between his ears. "Seriously?"

She jabbed the code into the gate one more time. "Yes, seriously. I have to check something."

Geoff grumbled quietly behind her, and audibly wished for some of the stolen drugs for his own aching head, but Trip was running full-tilt toward the perimeter before the gate clanged shut and she didn't hear the rest of it.

* * *

><p>She should have thought of it hours ago, back when the alarms first started blaring, but the noise had driven every rational thought out of her head, and they were only now starting to return, tails between their legs.<p>

The sensors had logs in their datachips. They helped her maintain perimeter checks and track how often they were calibrated, and by how much. She grabbed her databand from her house and scrolled through the logs quickly. There had been nothing since she and Monkey had been out there, but nothing from today, either. She'd have to check the sensors manually to be sure, at least until the data uploaded to the main system.

She snapped the databand over her arm and headed down to the bridges.

Nash was on duty, and he whistled down at her as she approached. "Getting late, there," he called. "We don't need any more alarms today."

"I'll be careful," she shouted back. "I only need a second."

"I'll come get you if you aren't back in twenty minutes," he said, and it sounded like a warning.

It was much more dangerous to follow the winding paths in the dark, but Trip knew every turn and footfall by heart. She stepped around the tortoise-sized rock without seeing it, and skirted around thorny bushes. She would check one sensor, just one, and call it done.

She went for the closest, easiest sensor, even though it still meant digging her throbbing fingers into rock fissures and hauling herself up by half her height again. She plugged her databand right into the sensor without removing it, bypassed the alarm as soon as it started, and pulled the log.

Trip's legs melted under her, and she collapsed to the ground more or less intentionally. She had to blink for half a minute to get the numbers to stop dancing.

There was her entry, where she and Monkey calibrated them a few days ago.

There was their round today, when she and Mark repaired them.

And early this morning, so early it was practically in the middle of the night, someone had reset them all.

Trip stared at the log, her vision losing focus. There was no name next to the entry, no indication who'd logged in to make the change. It wasn't impossible to fake, but it wasn't easy. She snapped her databand shut on the evidence, pressed bloodied fingers into her eyes, and stood unevenly.

"Hey, Trip?" Nash called out, his voice booming. "Five minutes til I come down!"

"Coming," she said hoarsely, then had to repeat it so he'd actually hear her.

Nash climbed down from the tower as she came back up the bridges. She had her mouth open and forming half a word when he shoved a thermos cap of steaming liquid at her. She tried to hand it back, but he pushed her hands away. "Hot cocoa," he explained. "Nothing it can't fix."

Trip downed it all without tasting it, to Nash's mild amazement, and handed the cap back. "Has anyone..." she started, and wanted to pass out, right there. "Has anyone...been hanging around here? Anyone come by early this morning?"

"Wasn't my watch, but I can ask around," Nash said thoughtfully. "What's wrong?"

"Everything," Trip said, sounding so bewildered and defeated that she was horrified at herself. "I mean, a lot. Not everything. It's just a mess."

"Mm," Nash said, and tried to hand her another capful of cocoa, which she refused.

There was no point in asking Nash about the sensors. He was a grease and gears sort of man, one of Ben's closest.

"You're on Ben's team, aren't you?" she asked. "Do you know...who would have a pair of bolt cutters, other than Ben? Something that could cut wire, like this thick?" She held out her forefinger and thumb, a quarter of an inch apart.

Nash considered for a moment. "Dunno. Ben has the pair we usually use. Carl's went missing a month ago, but Carl's a drunk."

"Focus, Nash," Trip said, exhausted.

"Sorry, love. That's it, as far as I know. Why? More trouble?"

Trip wanted to file away each problem into a neat container and solve them, one by one, but it wasn't that easy.

"No, no trouble," she said softly. "_Damn_ it."

Steam rose from the open thermos and spiraled in the air before drifting apart. Trip reached out and twisted her fingers through the trails, imagining she could catch it, or vanish with it, wherever it went. The night air was cool and soft, and Trip let it wrap over her skin instead of trying to fight it off.

After a few minutes, Nash slowly recapped the thermos and patted Trip's shoulder. "You know," he said, drawing it out, "I kind of thought everything would be simpler, after Pyramid."

The weariness settled in her bones all over again, like they'd only just crossed the desert, coming the wrong way somehow, and she could imagine filth and sand and sweat in every fold on her. She looked up at Nash, and he smiled at her, not like it had been a criticism of her efforts, but just at life, in general.

"Simpler," Trip repeated, and gently pushed his kind touch away. "I know. I'm working on it."


	8. Chimera

Note: This one is for Claranon, who was hunkered down for a hurricane and still wondered about chapter eight.

* * *

><p>Eight: Chimera<p>

* * *

><p>Monkey reached out to every merchant he could think of. He passed messages through the few nomads who might answer him, the occasional caravan that wandered through, and even the semi-sane enslaved who came his way. The network wasn't big and it wasn't reliable, but by the end of the week, Monkey had heard the same answer over and over again, and he felt something in him sink deeper every time. No matter how many people he asked, or where they were headed when they answered, it always came back the same—there had been reports of abductions for the past two months, and Granville had been screaming news of it into the waste the entire time.<p>

Monkey didn't have a radio receiver, but he knew where to find one, and it was closer than Liberty would be on foot. Even then, he put it off for days. There was always the chance that it was nothing. Rumors had swept the wasteland before, some about enormous raiding parties that swallowed entire settlements, others about madmen hunting in the wildness like animals, a second skeleton strung over their own with bits of wire and thread. These were the common nightmares of the wastes, but they were stories to keep children in their beds and not wander beyond the perimeter or stray too far at night. Monkey slept with a weapon at his side, and usually slept easy.

But the reports were the same, every time he asked, and his suspicions rose in the back of his skull like incoming tide.

Finally, after days of the same answers, Monkey packed up what he'd need for a day's trip on foot and headed out before the sun rose.

* * *

><p>In the earliest part of the morning, when the sky was pale gold and pink in the east and still star-scattered in the west, Trip gave up on sleep. There were too many ghosts and invisible foes lurking, ready and waiting for her to drift off. They leapt at her with outstretched arms each time she shut her eyes, until she finally tumbled out of bed and headed out into the city.<p>

She remembered the settlement like this, too early for people. The pre-dawn hours were louder, in a way. There was no noise to cover the turbines spinning with dogged lethargy, or to keep her from hearing the undercurrent of electricity that passed through the gates as she worked her way through them. Everything seemed sharper, more real. The controls to the metal gates were cold to the touch, slightly sticky on her fingertips.

She wandered through the city, hers and her father's, from one level to the next, up and down streets. Idly, she tried to find the route the thief might have taken after losing her and Geoff, but everything looked too clean and sterilized in the morning, and she couldn't remember how things were in shadows.

Trip made it all the way to the gates. Every time, she tried to conjured up comfortable old memories to lay over the new, the ones she never asked for. Here was the turtle-sized rock her father had told her was the edge of their settlement, and she wasn't allow to go beyond it without him. Here was the house where Mark—the original Mark—lived, close to his precious bridges. Mark was still alive in these memories, and if she stared hard enough at the front door to his odd little house, he might come out of it, face fat and wide with a smile. But Mark was dead, like the others, dashed against the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall, or buried in the dust.

Trip shook herself and scrubbed her palms against her arms before heading up into the watchtower.

She sent the man on duty home early, to get some sleep before the day started. He saluted her once, only half-sarcastic, and scuttled down the ladder before she could change her mind.

Trip found Nash's thermos of what was now merely chocolate milk, and poured herself a capful and downed it. She hadn't tasted much of it before, but it was sweet and bitter down her throat, with a cinnamon-like aftertaste that stuck to her tongue. Trip drank the entire thing without thinking, and pushed off the guilt of Nash's disappointment until later.

From the watchtower, if she squinted, the city still looked like home. She couldn't tell where old metal meshed with new, repaired after the Pyramid attack that killed half the town and drove the rest into the wilderness. Distance was a step back in time, sometimes for objects much closer than stars, and Trip peered at the city through her lashes until her head began to ache. When she stopped trying, everything snapped back into focus, cold and clear.

The dragonflies were carefully packed and ready at her feet, humming with quiet outrage at their captivity, ready to fly at a moment's notice to Monkey's canyon house, or anywhere else.

Trip pushed the noise out of her mind and turned to the eastern sky to wait for daybreak.

* * *

><p>There had been eight of them, all between the ages of ten and sixteen, half boys and half girls. Children, missing from caravans and settlements, hunting parties and travelers. So many varied places that it couldn't be a slaver raid. Monkey had seen trafficking before, had stopped a few groups when he saw them, but this was new. For one, no one saw the abduction. The child was simply there, and then gone. Spirited away into the wasteland, whispered into nothing. Trafficking was more common in the north, although there was no reason it couldn't start here, and Monkey dialed down the radio signal to think. Something about it didn't feel right.<p>

Traffickers wouldn't leave another daughter—just barely fifteen herself—and a mother to look for the lost girl. Women traveling alone was stupid at best, and for only one of them to be taken when the others were so close, and practically unarmed—it made no goddamn sense.

Monkey leaned back and drew in a deep breath, and immediately regretted it as his eyes began to water. Even a year later, the place still smelled like Pigsy.

Monkey had tried to wrap a bandana around his nose and mouth, but the smell crept into the folds and seemed to gather there. He would have brought the radio equipment with him, but he'd been lucky enough to get it working the first time, and moving it to the canyon was too risky. It looked like scrap metal now, and it truly would be scrap if he tried to tear it free and haul it back. So he sat, hunched over the console and flipping through the logged reports, and scowled at the news and the stench.

Monkey rummaged around Pigsy's things for a datachip, but couldn't find a way to copy the reports and audio clips from the transmissions. As far as he could tell, the entire system was automatic. Trip could take one look at it and decipher every nonsense scrap of metal, but it was a hunk of wires and wasted resources to him.

Monkey scrolled through the logs. The reports were all the usual—warnings of raider parties, messages to the east coast, directions to Liberty or Granville—up until two months ago. Then they turned into near-weekly reports of children missing from the road, all in the area. One just about every week, for the past two months.

The machine froze for the third time, and Monkey just barely resisted the urge to beat it working again.

"Couldn't have made this easy, porker?" Monkey asked, as the log list stuck on one entry and refused to budge. "Typical."

He waited, more or less patiently, for the machine to come back to life. He tried not to look around too much—the pig theme still bothered him, and one of the first things he'd done when he first started coming here was to find the source of Pigsy's continuous music that blared through speakers in the tunnel walls and shut it down, permanently, largely through tearing wires clean out of machinery. He'd killed the lights the first time, then the cooling system, but he finally got it, and the godforsaken whatever it was squeaked off into silence.

He flicked the screen to a log at random and hit play again. Nothing happened.

"Damn it, Pigsy," Monkey said, for his own benefit. "Still a pain in the ass."

Pigsy's workshop hummed at him, sounding like electricity and a dozen other things that made Monkey jumpy in his own skin.

He took down the pin-ups while he waited. Not because they offended him, on principle, but because Pigsy's taste was—Pigsy's. And if he ever did need Trip out here to part out the radio system, she didn't need to see that.

"Trip's doing fine, by the way," Monkey said. "New town, new people. She's..."

Monkey hated catching himself talking to the dead. They didn't care what anyone had to say, and he was really talking to himself, which he liked even less. And none of it was true, anyway.

The machine kicked back on, mid-sentence.

"—name is Piper," the voice said. "She's twelve. Brown hair, brown eyes. She's...oh, she's just...maybe four feet tall. Skinny. So skinny and..."

It had to be the girl's mother, because the broadcast broke down into sobbing and clipped short. The message must have come from a settlement with the equipment to push it this far, and Granville was closest.

Dogs first, Trip had said. Then snatching people off the road.

Monkey feathered his hair out to his fingertips and mashed it down again. Children would be easiest. Maybe the youngest would be harder to test, because they'd be too scared to follow basic commands. But early teens would try to bargain their way out of it. They'd have to try. They'd think that by putting the band on, just for a minute, they'd have a shot at escape.

Monkey scoured all of them, every single log in the past eight weeks, but he'd been right the first time.

There were never any reports that the children were found.

* * *

><p>Meetings sometimes made Trip long for the terror of suddenly staring down the barrel of a turret mech, or running along a steel beam with bullets zipping overhead like furious bees, or crossing the giant, moss-covered bridge over and over and over until her fingers were bloody stumps.<p>

"—in my own _home_!" Rose was saying. "Alarms blaring for hours, and there was no way to get away from them! What kind of people—"

Every now and then, Trip thought, in the safe space between Rose's opening tirade and the next, that that world had to be easier.

They were packed tight in the war room, all elbows and loud voices and breath that was too close. All the regular attendees were there, plus a few who put in appearances when they felt like it. Neil sat in the corner, near Marla but far from everyone else. The temperature was a good ten degrees higher than it ever was, even in the worst of summer, and Trip fervently hoped it would be a short meeting.

"—it's pure laziness, that's what it is, that this didn't get fixed sooner—"

"I didn't see you out there," someone said loudly.

"And I didn't see _you_," Trip mumbled, for her own benefit.

Ben arrived late, just as Rose was gathering herself up for the next wave of complaints. He slid into the chair next to Trip, and then nearly back off it and onto the floor.

"Are—whoa!" Trip said, as the chair almost squirmed out from under him. "Are you okay?"

Ben made a visible struggle to find the reserves of command over his muscles. He gripped both chair arms and hauled himself back up. "Yeah. Just tired. Didn't sleep a minute last night...unless I did it standing."

He hadn't said anything about the most recent theft, but Trip hadn't, either, and Geoff had been careful to keep his swollen face out of sight. But it hadn't mattered—Ben had only been in the clinic when he wasn't home, attending to Graham.

"How is he?" she asked.

Ben's entire body sagged. "Bad."

Ben's usually steady hands trembled faintly, bone-white and flexing on their own, when he wasn't paying attention. Ben's gaze was glassy as he peered around the crowded room.

"Fever hasn't broken?"

"No, not yet."

Trip thought that three days was a long time for a fever. "What is it?"

"I don't know." The energy and hope went clean out of him, in a breath of air that Trip could all but see. "I haven't seen anything like it."

The debate had carried on without them, and Trip made an effort to actually hear was Rose was saying, instead of blurring it together into an angry red mess of noise.

Rose had steamrolled ahead, her voice skimming half an octave above the rest. "The alarms, the hydraulics, these thefts in the middle of the night... It's ridiculous that we should have to put up with this kind of blatant incompetence."

Trip wanted so badly for Monkey to step out of the shadows, to take them all completely by surprise and hit Rose right in her snarling mouth. Or to hold her, at least, so Trip could.

"You know what we should do?" Rose demanded, without waiting for a response. "We should all pack up and go to Granville. At least they have a proper radio system."

"There's nothing wrong with dragonflies," Trip said automatically.

"They're toys," Rose shot back. "They barely work, they get lost...what good are they?"

Trip didn't bother to mention, yet again, that a dragonfly had been the main reason she was able to get to Pyramid at all, and bring Rose and the others home.

"You know we can't support a full-blown radio system," Trip said instead. "We don't have the parts, and no one's experienced enough to maintain it, and we don't really communicate that much with other settlements to make it worth the trouble, and..."

"Excuses," Rose said acidly. "I heard Granville has two systems, one for their government, and one for just anyone to use! Whenever they want!"

"That's a lot of noise," Ben said. "It's a good way to attract mechs."

Rose lifted her chin. "It's safe there."

Granville was big and popular and was usually where people went, if they didn't come to Liberty. More importantly, it was well-defended, and Trip noted with dismayed surprise how many people around the table were nodding.

"So go," Neil said suddenly. The room quieted enough to hear his chair creak as he leaned forward. "If Granville's that great, why don't you leave now?"

Rose's eyes opened just a bit wider, then narrowed at him. "Maybe I should."

"Of course, maybe they'll take you, maybe they won't," he said, and smiled in a way that said a lot more than his words were, and Trip couldn't identify it.

For just a moment, Rose's fingers flicked up toward her face, then stilled.

"Right," Neil said. "Remember now?"

Marla put her hand on Neil's sleeve, and he gave her the slightest glance before settling back in his chair. "Suit yourself. It's none of my business."

Rose clasped her hands together and sank back like a deflated balloon. "Well, what do you know?"

Neil sneered. "Enough to know that if the alarms could have been shut off one second sooner, they would have been," he said. "And we can't support a radio system, unless you're going to build it from scrap and power it with your screeching."

A few of them snorted with laughter, and Ben choked back his own.

Rose flushed an ugly shade of pink that worked its way up to her slaver scars. "Fine," she said through clenched teeth.

Trip mouthed her thanks at Neil, but he'd already gone back to ignoring them.

"Well, then," Marla said neutrally. "Any other business for today?"

They talked about the hydraulics for a while after that, and the status of the new turbine blade, and whether anyone had an opinion on whether the water supply quality had changed. They voted on the frequency of the watchtower guard change, and the minimum age for volunteering. They voted on the maximum fence height between homes, and the minimum distance from existing homes for new ones. Trip voted on each issue until her arm was sore from lifting it and waiting for the count to go around twice.

As the vote went around on vidscreen allocation, Trip finally noticed Mark on the far side of the room, waiting with predatory stillness. He watched the room carefully, taking stock of who was there and who wasn't, and a chill raced up Trip's spine and sparked at her fingertips.

"Is that it?" Ben asked, finally, and Trip snatched her hand back down from the last vote. "Marla, did you get the tallies?"

"All accounted for," she said. She pushed the pencil nub behind her ear and set her neatly marked papers on the table, like a schoolgirl. "If anyone has any announcements—"

"I do," Mark said, and the room turned to look at him.

He stood, slightly hunched, as if expecting immediate rebuff as soon as he spoke. "We don't get information as fast as everyone else," he said, not sure where to go with it yet.

Marla yawned.

Ben fought back a yawn of his own. "Is this about the radio system?"

"No, it..."

Mark began to lose the room again. The attendees broke off into smaller discussions, or inspected their databands, or looked to the door with obvious longing.

Mark swallowed. "Someone's..."

Trip almost felt sorry for him, but he didn't give her the chance for long.

"Someone's taking children!" Mark said loudly.

The buzz of conversation that had begun to build cut off immediately, like a door slammed shut.

"What?" Ben asked.

Mark's fingers walked along the tabletop as he fought for the right words. "We didn't hear about it until a few days ago, because we don't get the radio signals. But some of the settlements collect them and send them on dragonflies."

"What was that about children?" Marla asked.

"They said," Mark continued, "that there have been abductions on the road."

"Slavers," someone said fearfully, and the room began to whisper.

Trip's insides twisted, like a hand gripped around her stomach. There were always human slavers, before and after Pyramid, but it wasn't what Mark was about to say. She knew, because he'd warned her, and she couldn't imagine what he'd meant until now.

Mark drew himself up even taller. "No, it's not raids. It's one person at a time, going missing from everywhere around here."

"How many?" Ben asked.

"At least five. Maybe more."

"And they're children?" Marla asked.

"None of them are older than sixteen," Mark said. "They're saying the children are there, then just gone. Like someone took them." He gave them all a hard look, as best he could manage. "One person."

Trip's hands opened and closed uselessly at her sides. "Don't ev—"

"They're saying it's one person, out in the wilderness somewhere. They're saying he tracks travelers for days, or stalks settlements, and then a kid goes missing." Mark smiled, but it was more a show of teeth than anything else. "It's girls and boys, one at a time, snatched by some man living alone out there."

"No!" Trip said, but was drowned out.

"I _knew_ it!" Rose practically shrieked. "I _knew_ he was no good!"

The room was divided between puzzlement and fear, and was rapidly tipping toward the latter.

"Now, we don't know anything for—" Ben started.

"I knew he was no better than an animal," Rose said, triumph shining in her face. "I knew, from the moment he showed up at Pyramid, that he was dangerous. I _knew_ it."

"No!" Trip shouted, and was completely ignored. "No, he's...how could you even think...?"

Mark leaned forward on his knuckles, pressed hard against the table. "Maybe he sells them. Maybe he...doesn't."

Trip leapt to her feet. "Shut up!" she screamed. "Monkey would never!"

The grin Mark gave her was ruthless. "How do you know?"

"Because I know him!" Trip's thoughts stumbled all over themselves in bewilderment. "I know him, better than I know any of you! He's...he's _Monkey_!"

"Oh," Mark said, and the condescension in his voice tore at her. "Okay. You know him, huh?"

"_Yes_!"

His eyes went terribly, horrifyingly flat. "So what's his name?"

Every mouth in the war room snapped shut, and every face turned toward Trip, some of them so close that she could only see them in periphery.

A thousand responses popped into her head, every single one of them wrong.

"That _is_ his name," she said weakly.

"Bullshit," Mark said. "He didn't stumble out of the forest one day, screaming like an ape. He knows English, and he talks with the accent they all do out east. He's _from_ somewhere, and they probably didn't call him Monkey there. How can you trust a man when you don't even know his name?"

She felt, more than saw, the room wait for her reply. Their expectation of something reassuring and certain to come out of her mouth was suffocating.

"I..."

For an instant, Mark looked sorry, as if he were doing it for her own good, and she'd thank him in time.

"You stupid, lazy, jealous little shit," Nash said, almost casually. "You think that's what's going on?"

Mark's expression froze in a snarl. "I'm sure of it."

"So am I," Rose said, for good measure.

"Then it's a good thing you aren't majority," Ben said, and finally stood.

For the first time, Trip realized how close in height Mark and Ben were. Mark stood tall, buoyed by righteous epiphany—Ben looked exhausted and withered. It wasn't a balance she liked.

Ben cleared his throat. "If the reports are right, it bears looking into, no matter what—"

"I'm telling you—"

Ben slammed the flat of his hand on the table, and Mark's mouth snapped shut. "—or _who_ might be responsible. We owe it to Monkey to consider all other possibilities first."

"Who says?" Mark asked. His moment of triumph was gone, and he glared at Ben with sullen fury.

"Gather whatever information you want," Ben said. "Prove to us it's Monkey. We'll give you the chance to try."

"Ben!" Trip said in horror.

He turned to look at her. The circles under his eyes were smudges of black, as if he'd spread tar with his fingertips. "What will he find? Give him a chance to look, so he can find nothing."

Trip opened and closed her mouth, and was conscious of the group waiting to hear her response. Right up until this moment, she had known this handful of people. If pressed, she could name almost all of them, and make good guesses at the rest. But when every single face was tilted toward her for answer, it was a room full of strangers, Trip felt the confidence evaporate from her.

And in the middle of them, Rose and Mark were alight with potential victory, staring at Trip with the keen, pointed interest of half-starved dogs.

"Okay," she said at last, to Ben and Mark and the rest of them. "You can look. Find proof that it's Monkey, and we'll...listen."

Mark stared at her, his fingers curled hard against the table. His face twisted through a dozen expressions, but the room waited, and he'd been given a fair offer.

"I will," he said. "By the next meeting."

* * *

><p>After the meeting was adjourned, Trip had no idea what to do with herself. There was too much adrenaline-fueled energy buzzing under her skin, and she wanted to throttle Mark, or tell Rose exactly what she thought of her suggestions and hope it came to blows, and neither urge was helpful. They expected her to wait, patient and confident, until Mark could turn up little or no damning evidence.<p>

And Trip, for all the necessary growing-up in the last year, was still not especially good at waiting.

She paced her house, from one farthest corner to its opposite, and back, enough times to fill an hour. She couldn't sit still long enough to look at her console, or tinker with her databand. Her mind raced, volleying each worry to her to fret over before snatching it back and sending the next.

Children were missing, just like she'd feared. The dog, the story of the man in the waste, every bit of machinery breaking in Liberty—all of the vague, smoke-like fears that had followed Trip back from Pyramid began to solidify around this one threat. She realized with faint surprise that it didn't actually make her feel better.

And by nightfall, half the town would be convinced that Monkey was that man.

Trip stomped on the return course back to the kitchen corner. It was pure insanity.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror long enough not to recognize her reflection. Her skin was blotchy and puffed, especially around her wounded cheek, as if she'd been crying for hours. Her hair spiraled out from her head like visible insanity, tangled into a thick mess that she couldn't part with her fingers. Her eyes were the worst— red-brushed and sunken already, as if she'd been sitting vigil with Graham instead of Ben, as if she'd spent the last year only daring to sleep with one eye open.

She turned on her heel and went out into the city. She went up and down the streets, careful to look like she was jogging and not running away. She made a complete loop around the perimeter, counting each sensor under her breath as she passed. She climbed each watchtower, checked on the startled guards, and clambered back down before they could think of intelligent questions. Mark was on duty at the south tower, which she avoided completely.

She ran until she came full-circle, lapping her own footprints. She ran until early evening, when the birdsong changed and everyone began to turn their lights on around her. Trip ran until her lungs burned, and she turned in the direction of home.

As soon as she walked in the door, the rush of energy collapsed out from under her. She flopped into a chair at the kitchen table and started the slow, agonizing process of waiting.

* * *

><p>"Trip."<p>

She was dreaming of open skies, as far as the eye could see and then some. The sky was pinky-blue and burnt purple and other colors that only made sense in dreams. She heard the Cloud under her feet, but didn't see it, or feel its vibrations working up her legs until her bones rattled. Liberty was less than a speck beneath her, so small it might not balance on her fingertip if she tried.

"Trip. Come on."

The dream shifted, just slightly, and she soared higher to escape open-mouthed birds that cawed at her from below, nipping at her ankles with sharp beaks.

"Trip, wake up. I found him."

It didn't sound like Monkey. If she had the Cloud, he had to be here, had to be close. Trip reached out to the sun, to pinch it between her fingers. To her sleep-dulled surprise, it compressed under her fingertips and winked out of sight, and the sky went dark.

"_Trip!_"

Trip turned her head to get away from the voice that wasn't Monkey's, but the noise followed her, an inch from her ear.

She felt the hand fit over her mouth, distantly. The dream-sky swirled gray and green, and the sun flickered fitfully in her hand, just before her arm went limp and lifeless. The sun pitched forward into the darkness, and fell to the ground a mile below.

The Cloud's motors grumbled under her feet, hiccuped once, and went silent. Trip hung suspended for a few mindless seconds before freefalling into the empty sky.

She gasped herself awake.

She was half-sprawled over the kitchen table, with one arm pinched under her head and dead with sleep. She blinked warily up at Geoff, who peered at her just as carefully. "You look like hell," he said, so matter-of-fact that she didn't think it was meant as an insult.

"What're you doing here?" she asked. Her arm prickled angrily as she lifted it from the table and began massaging her wrist. "Get out, all right? It's been a crappy day."

Geoff frowned at her, lopsided. The right side of his face was discolored and only just starting to recover from the swelling. "For someone who owes me for a punch in the face, you're being kind of a bitch."

"Hgngh," Trip said, and yawned. "Sorry. Why are you here, though?"

"I found him."

Trip shook her arm and winced when all the nerves came back online simultaneously. "Found who?"

"That guy from the clinic. The guy who punched me? Remember that?"

It already felt like forever ago. "Are you sure it wasn't Mark?"

"No, it wasn't Mark. Anyway, Mark punches like a girl."

"I bet," Trip said. "So, okay. Start over. You found the guy...how?"

Geoff started gesturing with his hands, too fast for Trip to follow just yet. "I went back down that street we lost him on. So I just hung out, to see who came by, until I saw someone who looked like he did. You know,"—he made the same sort of winding-finger motions near his head—"like he wasn't all there?"

"Yeah, I remember. And you saw him?"

Geoff looked at her. "I saw three of them."

"So how do you—"

"They all went to exactly the same place."

Trip forced herself to wake up to hear the rest of it. "The same house?"

"Yeah, on a street connected to that one. They all had that kind of...lazy look to them. Like they were still asleep when they were awake."

"The same house, huh?"

"Yeah. And they didn't come out for hours. What kind of drugs did Ben say the guy took?"

Trip tried to remember. "Sedatives, I think."

Geoff smiled, showing nearly all his teeth. "Sounds right, doesn't it?"

"So, if he was one of these guys, why didn't he recognize you from when we chased him?"

"The mask, remember?"

Trip smacked her databand out of standby. The time flashed at her, and she grunted and stood up. "Then let's go."

Geoff raised his eyebrows. "Now? Don't you want to tell Ben?"

Telling Ben would make him worry, or make him stop her. Neither were useful.

"No," she said. She grabbed a jacket from its peg and thrust her arms into it. "Show me where. You don't have to come in, but I'm going."

"Fat chance. I'm the one who stood around all day. I'm going."

It was well into evening, when the shadows eased into soft blurs along the ground. As they left the house, Geoff swore under his breath, and Trip almost echoed it as Wren detached from the dim light and ran up to them. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere," Geoff said, meaner than he needed to. "Go home. Or go see Graham."

"He's sick," she said. "I want to be with you."

"Sorry, Wren," Trip said. "I need Geoff for a bit to help with the perimeter sensors. It's going to be dark soon, so it's going to be a little scary."

Wren gazed at her calmly. "That's okay."

"Just do what I say for once," Geoff said. "Go home. Watch vids or something. I'll be back later."

"Is this about that house?" she asked, and had the good sense not to try to sound innocent.

"Damn it," Geoff said. "Wren, what the hell? Did you follow me earlier?"

She nodded at him, and Geoff groaned. "Well, damn it, don't follow us now, okay? Go home."

"I don't want to."

Trip crouched down. "Can we trust you with a secret?"

Wren eyed her suspiciously. "Maybe."

"We think there are thieves in Liberty. Geoff and I are going to find them. We need you to stay here and keep an eye on the clinic for us."

Her eyes grew wide. "Why?"

"Because the thieves have been stealing stuff from Ben, and he's too busy taking care of Graham to stop them. So we're going to."

"I still want to go with you."

Geoff looked at her straight in the eye. "This is super important, Wren. If you see anyone at the clinic, I want you to run to Ben's as fast as you can."

"Why can't Trip do it?"

Geoff grinned at her. "Because you're faster."

Trip choked back an opinion on that, and Wren's face lit up like the sun. "Yeah, I am."

"Yeah, you are. Go find a good hiding place where you can see the clinic, and wait for us to come back, okay?"

"Okay," Wren said, and scrambled off.

As soon as she was out of sight, they started off again. Geoff led Trip down a few wrong streets intentionally, in case Wren came after them, but she seemed to stay put. Once they were sure, they wound back to the square, to where they first saw the thief, and started from there.

They didn't take the same path they had taken that night, when the man panicked and ran off in whatever direction would lose them. Instead, Geoff found a much shorter route, with gates that were carefully oiled against unexpected noise, and under windows that were too high to see someone passing in the street.

"This is planned," Trip said quietly. "I wonder how many times Ben was robbed that he didn't even notice, or didn't bother to tell us about?"

"When did he start locking the clinic at night?" Geoff asked, and Trip couldn't recall.

They came down the street from the other direction this time, and Geoff had to point out the last gate for her, so she could get her bearings. "That's where he got me," he said, and traced his finger through the air to indicate the way the man had run after that. "Follow me."

They retraced their steps and crossed over into an adjacent street. Geoff pulled Trip back when she moved to walk into the main causeway. "Hang on," he said. "They have someone on watch."

"Someone on _watch_?" Trip echoed incredulously. "On watch for what?"

Geoff shrugged. "I don't know. But there's always someone in the that window, on the second floor, and they have someone at the door who lets people in."

Trip hissed quietly. "Are they selling this stuff, right under our noses? I guess...it's always possible. But Liberty is so small, you'd have to—"

"There's one," Geoff said softly, and she peered around the corner with him.

The man leaned forward into each step as if he wasn't sure where the foot would land, and trusted gravity to guide him in the right direction. He flowed forward, his legs boneless lower than the knee, flowing out of him and never seeming to strike the ground the same way twice. There was no pattern to his footsteps—if he were guiding himself, it didn't look it.

The man paused in the street. Trip curled back, thinking he might have heard or seen them, but the man peered left, then right, then left again, in a short, furtive ritual, then continued on.

"It's the third door on the right side," Geoff whispered.

The man glided there, seemingly at Geoff's command, and swayed up to the doorway.

Trip and Geoff were too far to hear the exchange, but she saw the slot in the door slide open, and warm amber light slipped out. The man blinked in surprise, but leaned forward earnestly to say something, and the slot snicked closed.

Seconds later, the door opened, just enough to admit him, and the man whisked gratefully inside. The house swallowed his outline and sealed itself again, and the street was silent and unmoving again before Trip could so much as step out for a better look.

"That's exactly what happens," Geoff said at her side. "Every time. Someone walks up, the panel opens, they give a password or something, and they don't come back out for hours."

"Did you see anyone get turned away?" Trip asked.

"I don't think so."

Trip bit her lip. She hadn't expected anything this organized, and it picked at her that something like this existed in her city.

"Wait here," she said. "I'm going to see if they'll let me in."

"They won't," Geoff said. "And they'll know you found them. They might move."

The longer they listened, the stranger the house seemed. They could hear the faint noises wafting out of the other houses-people sitting to dinner, laughter, or thin strains of music, here and there. But the third door on the right was utterly silent, as if there were a protective force on all sides.

"It's the drugs," Geoff said thoughtfully, "and whatever they're doing with them, they have a lot of business."

"Shh!" Trip said, and pressed down on his head for good measure. "Here comes another one."

The second person approached from the other end of the street, and gave them just enough time to fall back into the shadows. As the figure accidentally stepped under the ring cast by the street lamp and darted away from it as if it burned, Trip noted with some surprise that the person was a woman, just barely older than she was. She didn't know her, but the slaver scars were fresh around her forehead. The woman skirted around the lights and approached the house.

Geoff crept out in front of Trip and indicated his very simple plan with a jerk of his thumb. They stayed low to the ground and sneaked up behind the woman as she negotiated entry.

As they got close, the door cracked open reluctantly, and the woman set one foot in the doorway.

"Now!" Geoff yelled, totally unnecessarily, and slammed his shoulder into the heavy door.

The woman screamed, the person on the other side of the door grunted as it pinned him to the wall, and Geoff disappeared into the shadows.

Trip bent down to help the woman back up. "You all right?"

The screaming stopped, but the woman stared through her blankly, her mouth hanging open. Trip pulled her by the arm, as gently as she could manage, just far enough to get the door closed behind them.

The man who had been guarding the door made a clumsy grab at her, and Trip sidestepped it. "Who the hell..." he wheezed, and pressed a hand to his chest. "You can't just burst in here."

Trip ignored him. "Geoff, where are you?"

The house smelled like breathing—the way a room smells after a dozen people had slept there. There were subtle smells of candle wax and fire, too, but little else. The room was too dim to see much beyond the entryway, but she sensed something in the room, moving quietly, breathing soft and even all around her.

"Geoff?"

"Hang on," he said, from somewhere in the darkness. "Don't look up."

She did anyway, and was nearly blinded when the lights flicked on.

On every side of her, lined up against every wall and corner in that first room, was a cot or pillow or narrow bed, with a sleeping body stretched out on it. They didn't react when the lights turned on, didn't so much as change their breathing. Even the ruckus of their break-in hadn't fazed the sleepers, and Trip had a very good idea where Ben's medications had gone.

They were all former enslaved, all of them. They were men and women, from Geoff's age on up, scattered across the floor like broken dolls. For the most part, they were pale, blade-thin people who looked like they dreamed more than they lived.

She whirled on the guard at the door. "Who's in charge here? Who's running all this?"

He gazed at her unevenly, his eyes half-drugged. "No one runs it. It's the dream-house."

"The what?"

Geoff whistled low from the other room, and Trip left the man wringing his hands in indecision at the door.

She found Geoff at the bottom of the stairs. There were sleepers here, too, curled up on pillows bigger than they were, or simply collapsed on the floor. The kitchen counters were covered in bottles and jars that reminded Trip of the clinic, or Neil's lab.

"Upstairs," Geoff said at a normal volume; no one stirred. "They have someone watching from there."

They nearly tripped on the man at the top of the stairs, his foot angled over the top step and looked halfway broken already. Trip pushed it out of harm's way and snapped upright when she saw his face.

"God damn it," Geoff said for her. "Carl."

Trip leaned over. "Carl, can you hear me? It's Trip. Wake up."

"How _dare_ you?" A furious, cold voice stabbed out of the darkness behind her, and Trip almost tumbled back down the stairs.

Rose stepped out of the room where Geoff had seen the second person keeping watch. "How _dare_ you come here?" she hissed at them. "This is the only place we have."

"What..." Trip started, and swallowed. There were more people in the room behind Rose, she was sure, and still others behind each door. "What is this?"

"This is our way home," she said angrily. "This is what you've left us."

"I don't understand..." Trip said. She held her hands out, palms upward, without realizing she'd moved. "Rose, what...?"

Geoff grabbed her wrist. "Trip. They're dreaming."

"What? Dreaming about what? Why?"

"Home," Rose said again. "Pyramid was a dream. You took it from us and gave us..._this_... in its place." Her sharp, bony hands gestured outward to encompass the entire wilderness surrounding Liberty, Granville and beyond. "How dare you show your face here?"

There was a short, muffled conversation at the door downstairs, and it swung open again to admit another visitor.

"Why didn't you say?" Trip asked. "We could have helped."

In the dim light, Rose's eyes shone like a cat's, like a creature more used to moonlight than the sun. "We tried. But what would you know about the enslaved's dreams?"

They heard the man coming up the stairs, but Trip didn't pay him the slightest attention until he gently looped his arm around her back.

"Trip," Ben said wearily. "What did you do?"

"She broke in," Rose said for her. "Here, as if she owns it. As if she has a right to everyone and everything in this city."

"We had an agreement," Ben told her. "You ask for the medications, not take them by force."

Rose met his gaze. "It's not enough. Do you know how many people come here?"

"Dozens," Geoff said, counting the bodies they could see propped up in the hall.

"More," Rose said. "And more each time someone appears at the gates, asking to be let in." She glared at Trip with poison in her eyes. "More every day, girl."

"Lee said they're seeing the same thing in Granville," Ben said. "He said they're working on a treatment."

Rose had something cutting and furious to say to that, but she held it back, just barely. Instead, she folded her hands over her chest. "You haven't seen Granville in a long time."

Trip felt small and alienated, even with Ben's arm protectively circled around her. She heard the deep, drugged breathing of the people in this room and the next, people she should know, should have passed in the street but never really saw properly. Geoff was antsy at her side, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other, eager to leave.

"Come on," Ben said, and eased Trip away. "Geoff, you too."

"It's not going to get better," Rose called after her. "This is what you did, you and your ape man."

That pulled Trip up from drowning. "No, this isn't what—"

"You ask him," she said, staring down at Trip from the top of the stairs. The light was faint around her, and her face was a skull in the unkind shadows. "You ask the man with no name whether he hears things at night, and if Pyramid followed him home. You ask him, and find out for yourself how much good you did."

Trip's eyes burned. "I..."

Ben tugged her away. "Home. Now."

The man at the entrance gave them a narrow, mistrustful look as they passed back out into the street. The door slammed shut, almost catching Trip's heel.

Ben led them to the end of the street and wordlessly punched the code into the gate. It was only after they were through, and the gate had closed securely after them, that he released Trip's arm and spun toward them.

"Why I should have to come, in the middle of the night, from my son's sickbed to your utterly brainless, ill-advised, _stupid_—"

"We were trying to help," Geoff said lamely.

For a second, Trip thought Ben meant to hit him. Geoff saw it, too, and flinched back. But Ben merely stepped forward and pushed his face closer to Geoff's. "Your sister, who you told to _watch the clinic_, came to my house to say that you two had gone looking for the thief."

"Damn Wren," Geoff said softly.

"Do you have any idea how much harm you've just done?" Ben demanded. "Go home, Geoff. Get your sister from my house, and take her home. I don't want to so much as hear your voice for the rest of the week. Is that clear?"

Geoff stared at him. "I don't see why—"

"_Is that clear_?!"

Ben loomed over him, crackling with fury, and Geoff backed away.

"Fine," Geoff said. "Whatever."

He twisted away from Ben and half-walked, half-ran toward home.

Trip squirmed as Ben turned his wrath on her. "I specifically said to leave it alone," he growled. "This one time, you could have listened."

"Yeah, well, you said you weren't hiding anything from me," Trip said. "Why didn't you tell me about _this_?"

Ben squeezed his eyes shut. "What could you understand about it?"

Trip felt everything in her world slip right through her fingers. "You hid this from me...because you thought I wouldn't understand?"

"You put a slaver band on Monkey," he said, and sounded a thousand years old. "Trip, to you, they're tools. They're a way of getting something from people."

She knew that was wrong, each and every time she looked at Monkey. "That was different," she said angrily. "That was once, and now I have to live with it."

"Do you know what it does to them? Did he tell you?"

"He said he saw things, back then. But only a couple of times."

Ben looked at her with such pity that her heart sank. "He would. Did he tell you what wearing the mask was like?"

"He said..."

Trip remembered, even though it had been so brief, even though she was already done listening to Pyramid's talk of his world compared to theirs. She hated him, hated every bit of pain and fear he'd inflicted on the wasteland for years, and what Monkey saw in that short minute couldn't have mattered.

"What did he say?" Ben said.

Trip couldn't look at him. "He said it was beautiful."

* * *

><p>Ben went back home to Graham, and left Trip to wander the streets in bewilderment.<p>

Her city should have been right here, solid and reassuring under her feet, but it wasn't. It hadn't been hers for a long time.

She tried to find a route that would make everything feel familiar again. She wanted to find the path that would take her the longest way around Liberty, past the things she was used to seeing, to see it as it was a year ago. But her memory of the city betrayed her, and her feet led her blind through the dark, and left her standing outside Monkey's dark house.

There had been so many nights when she wanted to take the road from her father's house here, to see if he breathed the same way in his sleep in a house, in a bed, as he did by the roadside, stretched out near a dying campfire on the road to Pyramid. She wanted to know if her Monkey could fit in here, but it was like banging two wrong puzzle pieces together, and she could hear Mark and Rose in her thoughts—she trusted a man with no name, who still heard shreds of Pyramid in his head and didn't tell her.

She stepped inside and flipped on the lights.

Nothing was touched. There was a difference between being meticulously clean—which Monkey wasn't—and simply not using what he was given. Trip walked from the dusty table, to the bone-dry sink, to the still-spotless console, feeling like she was leaving footprints in unexplored places. There was a fine layer of dust on everything, even the door handles. She knew, even before peeking at the bed, that it was just as made as it had been when he arrived.

Trip pressed down on the growing fear that she didn't really know him, after crossing the wasteland, after everything. He touched nothing she gave him, like a wild dog that didn't trust the food you offered, or the hand that offered it. She paced the house half a dozen times, looking for places where he might have at least pretended to live, but she found nothing, and the emptiness swelled in her.

She went back to the unused bed and sat down heavily. The blanket puffed out as she collapsed on it, and a smooth rush of soapy air reached her. It didn't smell like anywhere Monkey had been. He smelled like clean earth and sweat and confidence, but not fresh soap, not often. Trip drew in a breath and curled up, wringing the blanket between her hands.

She lay perfectly still for a long time, her hands wrapped in the still-new blanket, wishing she could find traces of him there.


	9. Immigration

Nine: Immigration

* * *

><p>The dragonflies tended to gather in the places where nature had won out over the waste, and greenery spilled from every pocket in the earth to form small hiding places for them. They darted from one leafy overhang to the next, chasing imaginary specks of light and each other. Their lenses whirred in and out of focus almost constantly. Individually, the sound wasn't easy to trace, but a dozen of them created a bright, uneven buzz in the air that Trip could track with just her ears, if she had to. Sometimes, she'd work her way around the outskirts of the overgrown, crumbled city, with nothing but her instincts and swift hands to capture them.<p>

Today, there wasn't time, and she headed straight for the place she was most likely to find enough dragonflies for Ben, a few hours' walk from Liberty, almost due south.

Those first days after finding the dream-house, Trip noticed things in the city she'd never seen before. She saw the way the new arrivals were treated at the gate, given a once-over by Rose, personally, every time, and put through some kind of triage system based on what they needed most. She saw Neil working late to get more sedatives to Ben, or straight to the dream-house, grumbling like an old man the entire time. She saw the sheer number of people who went to the clinic, almost daily, just to turn away now that Ben had taken up permanent residence at Graham's bedside.

Trip saw all these things the first day, and by the third, she could no longer convince herself that they hadn't been in plain sight all along.

She'd felt people looking at her differently. It might have been in her mind, but their imagined scorn tickled at the back of her head, and she always felt that there was someone watching her, even when she spun in hopes of catching them, and saw only empty streets. She could imagine them talking about Monkey, or her and Geoff's botched attempt to expose the dream-house as a den of thieves and saboteurs. Nothing in the city had changed, but Trip felt its currents differently, felt something living and thriving within it that she'd been blind to before, and it hissed under her skin like a sixth sense.

After the third time Rose had caught Trip's eye in the street, almost electric with animosity, Trip had jumped at the next reasonable excuse to get out of the city. Ben made the honest mistake of mentioning that he'd exhausted their supply of dragonflies in messaging Granville, and she couldn't get her gear packed fast enough. She had been out of the city at daybreak, earlier than anyone would be up to see her, or for her to see anyone.

Trip reached the dragonflies' hiding place after a few hours of hard walking. They were collected around a shallow pool of run-off water from the last rain, dipping toward it without ever breaking the surface. They weren't waterproof, but they never seemed to mind the danger of short-circuiting. Every now and then, Trip wondered what sort of programming they'd originally had, and what so many years of wilderness had done to their sense of self-preservation.

The easiest way to trap dragonflies was to interest them in something. She used tiny bits of mirror, suspended on ghost-thin strings from a mobile that spun lazily in the breeze. She set it in a low-hanging tree branch, settled behind the trunk, and waited.

It only ever took one dragonfly to notice the trap, and the rest soon followed. They each zipped close to the sparkling light with excitement that chirped back at the others. Trip set off the EMP in a quick burst, just enough to shut their sensors down long enough for her to snatch one or two out of the air and deactivate them before their furiously beating wings could break skin.

Trip gingerly folded each dragonfly's wings to its sides and wrapped it tight with strips of leather before putting it in her bag. The dragonflies were, by nature, more curious than bright, and it wasn't until she'd snatched half a dozen of them that the rest thought it prudent to ignore the mirror shards. Trip caught a few more by sheer luck and skill, and the survivors finally flitted away to safer ground.

She pulled the trap down and counted the dragonflies with weary satisfaction before shouldering the bag again. Any other time, she could easily have made a day out of bagging a handful of dragonflies. But Ben had asked her to hurry back, and she planned on it, even if coming home felt like slow death.

There were so many places Trip wanted to avoid, she was having trouble remembering where her usual hiding places were. Everyone could find her at home, so that no longer felt safe. Neither did Ben's house. She had to avoid the entire section of town near the dream-house, and Mark was still on his usual patrol on the watchtowers when he wasn't scouring the incoming dragonflies for more evidence against Monkey, which meant she had to carefully plan her shifts around his, or try to block out his voice during status checks on the radio.

To at least pretend to feel proactive, she got copies of the dragonfly chips from Nash, who helped her find the ones Mark had found interesting. She listened to each of them a dozen times, maybe more, and tried to tease out the details that could prove it couldn't have been Monkey. But the reports were so straight-forward and limited that they couldn't prove anything one way or the other. It wasn't a witch hunt yet, but it would be, if Mark managed to piece everything together the way he wanted.

Trip tapped the bag of dragonflies to silence them, if only for a moment, and tried to walk faster.

A few times, she thought about sending a message to Monkey. She wanted to ball everything up into one neat missive—the enslaved's dreaming, the missing children, the house he never used. But every time she thought she had it properly organized, the words got away from her. Maybe Monkey knew full well about the dream-house. Maybe Rose barred him from it, because she blamed him for bringing them here. Maybe he couldn't sleep like the others, or maybe he couldn't sleep at all.

She couldn't ask him. She didn't know how to.

Trip wondered about the dozen things that had happened in recent weeks, ignoring the sound of the dragonflies as they stirred and the sharp, unfriendly cawing of the birds overhead. She focused on walking, because that much, at least, was predictable.

Five miles from Liberty, just before the road angled north and would dump her back into the empty landscape, Trip almost missed the noise of something scrabbling up behind her. The noise of claws on scored concrete and dirt caught her off guard, and she had her pack safely on the ground and her EMP in hand before she had even turned halfway.

The road behind her was empty. Trip flicked her databand on to scan everything within a half-mile radius. The scans came up blank, for mechs, at least, but Trip hadn't imagined it. She kept her hand on her EMP, finger hovering over the primed discharge button.

For a few seconds, the only sound was her own breathing through clenched teeth.

"All right!" she shouted down the road, at the hill that hid whatever was a few dozen yards away. "If you're coming after me, you'd better do it now!"

She waited. The words hung in the air, echoing in memory but nothing else. Trip bounced lightly from one foot to the other. "Come _on_!"

Rose had said that Pyramid was a dream, whatever that meant. Mark said she didn't see Pyramid, even when she was staring right at it. And Monkey—Monkey never said anything.

"_Okay_!" she roared back at the empty road. "You listening to me? You _hear_ me? Whatever or whoever you are, you get your ass out here _now_!"

Absolute silence met the challenge, but Trip wasn't done yet.

"Because you know what?" she demanded, of the scraggly trees, of the broken pavement, of every single thing in the world that had gone wrong in the last year. "I am _done_. I'm done with this—all of it. I'm sick of not knowing a goddamn thing, because no one bothers to tell me, and it's suddenly my fault I didn't know. I'm sick of everything being a conspiracy. I'm just tired, and angry, and all I want is to make things right again but I _can't_!" She took a deep, rattling breath. "So you had better believe me when I say that I don't care if you're a mech or a raider or a slaver or _whatever_, you are fucked no matter what, because I am armed and tired and pissed off and _not having a good day_!"

Even the dragonflies went still after that.

Trip waited, her hand still trembling over her EMP, and willed something, anything, to come up over the hill, so she could kill it.

Two completely incomprehensible things happened then, in short succession. A cocker spaniel bounded up over the hill, its collar dangling and loose around its neck, and launched itself at Trip before she so much as had a chance to shield her face. And right behind it, a man's booming, unrestrained laughter poured up over the hill and hit her as hard as the dog had. She let the dog knock her on her backside, and its tongue lapped wildly at her face, hands, neck, anything it could reach.

"Does that warning go for travelers, too?" the voice asked, and Trip pushed the dog away to stand as the vehicle came into view.

It was a custom job, a cart of sorts pulled behind a tractor even taller than the man riding it. The cart had a tarp pulled up over it into a makeshift living space. A pair of heads poked out of the tarp and gave her curious glances before swiftly disappearing again.

For a moment, Trip thought she imagined it all. Families traveling like this were rare, but a family comfortable enough to keep a dog as a pet was astounding, and said volumes about the world outside Liberty. She tried to memorize every detail of the one-vehicle caravan that approached, in case it was the last she saw in a long time.

The man driving the tractor was nearly Monkey's size, but only in height and width, all fat where Monkey was muscle, and without any of the tattoos. He looked bug-like at first, with goggles pulled down over his face, each lens the size of Trip's palm. He whistled high, and the spaniel disengaged sniffing Trip and ran back to the cart.

When he pulled up close enough, the man chucked a leg over the tractor wheel and leapt down. It was only when he cut the engine that Trip realized she hadn't heard it all.

The first thing to pop out of her mouth was totally unplanned. "Is that electric?" she asked, unable to help herself.

The man stopped a few feet from her and laughed, unnervingly loudly. "Sure is. Found it that way, though. Don't ask me how it works. If it breaks, we're in pretty deep shit." He leaned in close, and Trip did her best not to back away. "Don't tell my wife, of course."

Trip smiled in relief. "Yeah. I won't."

He grinned at her, half his teeth gone and the pink of his tongue flashing at her in their places. "So," he said. "So. Are we doing names, or are you going to zap me?"

She still had the EMP in her hand, and Trip shut it off hastily. "Sorry. I'm Tripitaka—Trip."

The man took her hand warmly and pumped it up and down. "Harold." He turned around and bellowed at the cart. "Get out here! She's a traveler!"

"She's a traveler with a foul mouth," a woman said, and Trip cringed. The woman started to climb out of the cart, but was beaten to it. "Portia, Colt, get back—get back here this instant!"

The girl was first. She ran up to the dog, who accepted her as enthusiastically as he'd done for Trip. She jerked her head back from his excited greeting and snapped his collar shut again. "Bad dog." The spaniel didn't seem to mind being scolded, and soaked her face with a second licking fit.

Harold put a hand on her head. The girl was six or so, with a fluff of hair that was more like the dog's than her father's. She gazed at Trip with disinterest, then spun on her heel. "C'mon, Keats."

The dog followed her back to the cart, and Harold chuckled. The woman came next, with her son in tow.

"This is Sophie," Harold said. "My Sophie."

"Your Sophie," the woman said, "wants to know why we stopped for _this_." She looked Trip up and down, and her mouth pursed in distaste. "She looks crazed. How do you know she's not dangerous?"

Harold tutted at her, and Trip made a sudden, ineffectual effort to smooth out her hair. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just...been a rough week."

Sophie's dark eyes darted over Trip's face. "Well, at least you aren't one of them. That's all we need, this close to—_Portia, don't let him eat that_!"

She huffed off to where her daughter crouched, fascinated, as Keats bent his head to mouth at something plastered to the road. The boy, no older than his sister, clung to Harold's shirt.

"Say hi, Colt," Harold said, and the boy offered his hand silently.

Trip shook it with deadpan seriousness. "Nice to meet you."

Colt nodded, and jerked his hand back from her. He looked at Trip with big, wide eyes that reminded her of Graham. "Have you seen the Bone Man?" he asked suddenly.

"Colt!" Harold said, sounding world-weary. "Enough with the Bone Man thing."

"The Bone Man?" Trip asked.

"It's nothing," Harold said. "Just a make-belief demon for the kids. You know kids."

"Yeah," Trip said slowly. "Colt, who's the Bone Man?"

Instead of answering, Colt turned his head around and shouted. "Poorrrrt, come tell her 'bout the Bone Man."

"Keats is eating poop!" Portia shouted back, as if this were distraction enough.

Harold blinked, owl-like, and laughed so hard he doubled over, his hands clutching his gut.

"_Portia_!" Colt whined. "I can't tell it like you can!"

Portia stomped back over, her hand around a squirming Keats's collar. "She doesn't know the Bone Man?" she asked with clear disdain.

"No."

"No," Trip agreed. "Who's the Bone Man?"

Harold threw his hands in the air. "Go for it, then," he said. "Try not to scare her too bad."

Portia gave her father a withering look, and Trip thought that given a few years, that girl would be something to be reckoned with.

"The Bone Man," she said theatrically, "has four hands. Two are real and two are just bones. He has two heads, too, but one is a skull he keeps in his bag. He can be invisible, when he wants. He sneaks right up behind you and you won't see him coming."

Colt's eyes were impossibly wide, as if he'd never heard it before.

"What does the Bone Man do?" Trip asked in good-natured horror.

Portia lowered her voice to a whisper. "The Bone Man steals kids."

Trip felt her smile evaporate. "Oh, yeah?" she forced herself to ask evenly. "How?"

"Promises 'em candy and toys," Portia said. "And drags 'em away. He takes their bones—" She made a spiralling motion with one hand into the other, as if removing a bone like a cork from a wine bottle. "—and ties them around his hands or feet or whatever." She leaned over to her brother, baring her teeth. "Sometimes, he makes necklaces."

"Out of what?" Colt whispered, right on cue.

"Out of..._toes_!" Portia exclaimed, and Colt squealed.

"Portia," Trip said, after they'd calmed down. "How do you know this?"

The girl looked up at her. "Everyone knows it." She paused and considered. "'Cept you."

Harold looked skyward in despair. "We never should have let them listen to those radio transmissions back east. The kids won't stop once they get an idea in their heads."

"No," Trip said, without hearing herself. "How many?"

"Hm?"

"How many kids?"

"Eight," Portia recited. "Four boys and four girls."

"Eight _naughty_ boys and girls," Harold said. "Boys and girls who didn't go to bed on time, or didn't do the dishes, or didn't take the dog for a walk..." He craned his fingers out menacingly. "Bad little boys and girls..."

"Dad, _stop_," Colt said in fresh terror.

Portia merely rolled her eyes and walked away, dragging Keats in tow, and Colt went after her.

"So!" Harold said brightly. "It's nice to see someone else on the road, anyway. Where are you headed?"

"Yes," Trip said, distracted. "It's nice to see..."

She trailed off and stared into space for a few seconds, her mind clicking and stumbling. Harold waited.

"Sorry," Trip said. "I hadn't heard of the...Bone Man before. Does everyone know about it?"

Harold clapped an enormous hand on her shoulder. "Seriously, sweetheart, have you been anywhere near a radio lately? Everyone's been talking about it." He jerked his chin over his shoulder to indicate his family. "We try to make it a joke, sure, but it's real enough."

The last hope that it was all an elaborate set-up, something Mark planted to vilify Monkey, vanished from Trip's subconscious just after she realized it was there.

"Any chance it's a story that...got out of hand?" she asked. "There are always stories—kid's stuff."

"Not this time," Harold said. "Truth is, I was scared to bring 'em this way. A lot of the abductions are from around here."

"Around...here?" Trip asked. She could practically feel her brain slowing, refusing to cooperate. "Did they say where?"

Harold indicated everything around them with a half-circle motion in front of her. "Round the city to the south, I guess. The road to Granville. And that canyon, I think."

He didn't notice that Trip went perfectly, totally still. He took a deep, winding-up sort of breath and smiled at her broadly. "Enough of that. Sad talk, that's all. So!"

"So," Trip echoed mechanically.

Harold forced a laugh. "Don't you look serious now? Don't fret your pretty head about it. You're a bit old for the Bone Man, I think."

Trip couldn't match his smile—couldn't even try.

"So!" Harold boomed, yet again. "I don't suppose you could do me a favor?"

Trip's tongue was dead weight in her mouth, so she nodded.

Harold smiled. "I'm happy wherever I am, truth be told. But Sophie, she's dead-set on Granville."

Trip nodded again.

"Thing is..." Harold leaned in close, confidential. "We are the tiniest bit lost."

"Granville..." Trip said, and had to give herself a swift mental kick to remember what the word even meant. "It's—erm—that way. North-northwest. Out past Rider."

"Far?" he asked, looking weary for the first time.

"No, it's pretty close," Trip admitted. "So's Liberty, though," she added, a little selfishly.

Harold gave her a look she couldn't identify, and he laughed, but it wasn't the same friendly, open laugh as before. "You've got a sense of humor, I'll give you that," he said. "Do we look like some sorta vegetables?"

Whatever Trip had been about to say next froze in her throat. "Oh," she said. "Oh. Well, no, I guess you weren't...enslaved..."

Harold scrutinized her. "You look like a freelifer, sweetheart. Where are you from, then? Are you traveling alone?"

"No," Trip said, but she wasn't sure to what. "I mean, I...wasn't enslaved, no. I'm from..."

"Ewww!" Colt and Portia cried out in unison somewhere behind the cart, and the sound of Sophie's scolding rose right after.

Harold carried on as if he hadn't heard. "Can you believe they called it that, though?" he asked.

"Called what...what?" Trip asked, slightly numb.

"'Lib-er-ty,'" he said, pronouncing each syllable with mocking. "You know what I call that?"

Trip shook her head, wordless.

"Snooty, that's what I call it," Harold said. "Preten... Pretensh..."

"Pretentious," Sophie said, coming up behind him. "Lot of bleeding-heart, love-preaching nut cases, if you ask me. Taking in the walking dead like that."

"Now, Soph," Harold said warmly. "Someone has to."

Sophie snorted.

Trip opened and closed her mouth a few times. "So...you haven't been there?"

Sophie gave a short, razor-sharp laugh. "Never, and I hope not to. Did you hear, they let some teen girl run it? Some self-proclaimed savior or something. Brought them back from Pyramid." Her eyes glittered dangerously. "Fat lot of good that did the rest of us."

"Well, just leave 'em," Harold said, and turned back to Trip. "Sorry, where did you say you were from? Rider or something? Did they re-settle there already?"

Trip didn't remember what she said after that. She didn't remember pointing them toward the shortest, safest route to Granville, or declining their offer to give her a ride there. Trip shouldered the bag of dragonflies swiftly and watched them drive away, Portia's and Colt's heads poked out the rear flap of the tarp. She waved goodbye until their heads popped back inside.

Trip waited another five minutes, watching their dust trail with the same bland smile on her face, then ran all the way back to the bridges.

* * *

><p>Trip made a beeline for Ben's garage as soon as she got back to town. The front door to the clinic was still locked, so she went around the side to the garage entrance. The door was propped open halfway, and she ducked under it.<p>

Geoff was there, buried up to his elbows in the mechanics of Monkey's bike. Wren sat nearby, a tattered old repair guide balanced on her knees.

"What're you doing?" Trip asked, without honestly caring.

"Fixing it," Geoff said. "No one else has time, so I'm doing it."

"Do you know how?"

Geoff reached for another wrench without looking at her. "As much as anyone else."

Trip set the bag of dragonflies on the workbench. "Geoff..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

He kept his back to her, feigning total concentration on the bike. Wren lifted her gaze from the manual, her grubby finger on one of the illustrations as if to mark her place, and gave Trip an uncomfortable look.

"Okay," she said, because she didn't particularly want to talk about the dream-house, either.

"Where were you?" Wren asked. "You're all sweaty."

"Nowhere," Trip said. "Just getting dragonflies."

She upended her bag and methodically began upgrading the dragonflies into something they could use. Starting from scratch would take hours, but this way saved her a bit of time. She worked in silence alongside Geoff for half an hour, unsnapping and refitting dragonfly pieces as he puzzled his way through the remains of the bike. At some point, Trip set a dud dragonfly aside, and Wren quickly scooped it up into her hands as if it were a wounded animal.

"Oh," Geoff said at last, and pointed across the room. "Ben said he found those under a cabinet."

Trip knew, even before she turned, what it would be. The bolt cutters were there now, carefully tacked to the wall with the rest of the tools.

"He said they slid under the cabinet. He found them this morning by accident."

"Okay," Trip said without inflection. "That's good."

Once she had four working dragonflies that clicked and buzzed at her curiously, Trip carefully pinned their wings back and slid them into her bag. She ducked under the garage door and nearly bumped her head on it when Wren jumped down to come after her, dragonfly still in hand. "Are you going to see Graham?"

"Yeah. Well, Ben, anyway. I don't know if Graham's up for visitors."

Wren shrugged.

"Fine," Trip said. "Come on. Geoff, did you need her for anything?"

In response, Geoff threw a wrench halfway across the garage with an ear-cracking crash. "No! God, when do I ever? Just go already!"

Trip cupped her hand around the back of Wren's head and guided her outside, as Geoff peppered them with a trail of curses that didn't start to fade until they were halfway to Ben's.

"Geoff's mad at me," Wren said, a little unnecessarily.

"He'll get over it," Trip said. "But you did tattle."

Wren's face scrunched up, like she was getting ready to cry, then went lax again. "I had to. Ben always said to stay away from there."

Not for the first or last time, Trip suspected that everyone in Liberty knew about the dream-house but her. "Did he say why?"

"No. He just said it wasn't safe."

Trip took the dragonfly from her, and Wren started picking dirt from her nails instead.

"Hey, Wren," Trip said, and did her best to sound bored. "Do you know what kind of dreams they have?"

"Who?"

"The people from Pyramid."

Wren gave it more thought than Trip thought it required. "No. They don't tell me." She looked up at Trip as they paused near the gate. "Is Graham going to die?"

Trip mistyped the last digits of the gate code, and it chirped at her sharply. "No, of course not," she said, and tried the sequence again. "Why would you ask that?"

"Geoff said he's really sick, and Ben hasn't let me see him for days."

"Well, he just doesn't want you to get sick, too."

Wren scowled. "Ben didn't get sick."

"He still might, though," Trip said, but didn't really believe it.

She handed the dragonfly back to Wren as they reached the house. No one answered the first time she knocked, or the second. The dragonflies buzzed at her with fresh malice as she set the case on the ground. "Ben? Are you home?"

The door creaked open before Trip could reach for the handle. To her surprise, Marla's weathered face peered out.

"Oh," Trip said. "Marla? Is Ben here?"

"Now's not a good time, sweetheart. Hello, Wren."

"Hello," Wren said. "Can I see Graham now?"

"No, sorry. He's still sick."

Marla was blocking the doorway with the width of her, the sensibly plain print of her dress obscuring their view into the house.

Trip indicated the dragonflies at their feet. "I brought these. Ben wanted them to reach Lee?"

Marla's eyes were heavy. "Yes." She considered for a moment. "Yes, he did."

"Marla, tell me what's going on," Trip pleaded. "Is it bad? Why are you here?"

Marla looked over her shoulder, and spoke toward the back room. "Ben? It's Trip. Do you want...?"

Ben said something, muffled by distance, and Marla stepped back to let Trip inside. "Leave those there," she said, meaning the dragonflies. "I don't think we'll need them right now."

Trip's heart forgot a beat. "Is...is Graham...?" The rest of it was too difficult to get out.

Marla shook her head. "No. No, thank goodness. But we aren't hearing back from Granville, and we're running out of time."

"Can I see him?"

She leaned on the door to hold it open and let Trip in. Once Trip stepped inside, Marla went out into the street. "Wren, come on."

Wren's mouth twisted. "I want to see Graham."

"You know what we're going to do for Graham?" Marla asked. "We're going to make him those cookies he likes so much. That'll make him feel better." She stroked her chin with her thumb. "What're they called, again?"

"Peanut-butter chocolate snappers?" Wren asked.

"That's it!" Marla said. She considered Wren, her finger still working at the underside of her jaw. "And I think I could use some help."

Wren grinned. "Okay."

Marla made a scooping, hurry-along motion with both hands, and Wren skipped ahead in a burst of motion.

Marla smiled at her and waved as Wren paused at the end of the street, then turned to Trip. "I'll be back later. You go easy on Ben—that boy is everything he has."

Trip promised with a nod, and watched Marla turn to follow Wren, as best she had a chance to catch up with her.

The house was too cold, and had a sort of foreign smell, layers upon layers of medicines boiled together over the previous days. Trip passed the carefully cleaned dishes along the kitchen counter, knowing full well Marla had been busy, and tapped gently on the door frame at Graham's room.

Ben's back was hunched and frail, and he turned to look at Trip with eyes that seemed ready to drift back into his skull. He motioned her inside with a weak sweep of his hand.

"How is he?" Trip asked.

Ben shrugged painfully and scooted his stool away so she could see.

The person in the bed couldn't possibly be their Graham, and Trip immediately understood why they hadn't wanted Wren to see him. The fever-blush reached out from the base of his throat to his ears, and his breathing was shallow and hot against Trip's skin when she held a hand over his face. She hadn't known, couldn't even have imagined, and she was suddenly terrified for him.

He was sleeping, or too fevered to respond, when she sat on his bed. "Graham, sweetheart. Can you hear me?"

Graham didn't move.

"How long has he been like this?" Trip whispered to Ben, afraid to hear the answer.

"Days," Ben said heavily. "It doesn't look like anything I've seen. Neil took a look at him and said he'd research it, but he wasn't hopeful."

Ben stepped up to the bed and pushed Graham's nightshirt down to expose the skin around his neck. It was splotchy, angry red. "The rash is all over him, but it's worst here." He pressed two fingers to Graham's neck. "And listen. Do you hear that?"

The breath rattled in Graham's throat, past swollen tissue and blood that came up when he coughed weakly. Trip thought, with odd detachment, that it had to be what death sounded like.

"What do we do?" she asked.

Ben shut his eyes. "I've been sending dragonflies to Lee, but there hasn't been any word back yet."

"How long would it take to get to Granville?"

"On foot? Maybe four days. Three and a half if I don't stop for long."

"That's four days out, four days back," Trip said. "Graham might not..."

"I'm not doing him much good now," he said. "I'm keeping the fever down as much as I can, but I'm really just keeping him comfortable. I've...never seen anything like this. I need help."

"We can send someone to get Lee."

"Granville doesn't always welcome strangers. They'll let me in—I've been there before, and Lee would vouch for me. But I can't send just anyone. If they turn him away, we'd have lost those days." Ben gripped the bridge of his nose in his fingers. "Marla offered to sit with him. She's been a nurse, when she was needed. She'll be able to do everything I've been doing so far."

He stared at the sweat-soaked pillow, where blood had dried into flecks near Graham's mouth. Ben blinked longer than he should have, and for a second, Trip wasn't sure he'd reopen his eyes at all.

"When are you leaving?" she asked.

"As soon as I can. As soon as...I'll need to find someone to go with me. There are a lot of mechs out that way, and I can't take any risks."

"What about—"

He shook his head. "Keep Monkey near you."

"Then who?" Trip asked. "You're not going alone."

"I'll ask one of the guys, probably Nash. He doesn't have family here, so he'll go if I ask."

"Yeah," Trip said softly.

They sat at Graham's bed for a long minute, Trip perched on the edge of the mattress, her hands resting lightly on Graham's. Ben crouched on the stool, where he must have been for days, just like this.

"What do you need me to do?" Trip asked.

* * *

><p>She walked him down to the bridges with him less than an hour later, carrying the extra pack meant for Nash.<p>

"They probably won't try to hold any council meetings while I'm gone," Ben was saying. "Keep Mark from trying, if he thinks about it. You can ask Carl for help if you need it."

Trip wondered about that, but didn't say anything.

"You'll be fine," Ben said. "Don't let Rose walk all over you, but try to make sure they have the meds they need. I know it isn't easy to understand, but...try. Accept that you can't understand for now, and try to help them without having to know. Neil will be able to mix up the medications without any trouble. You can deliver them once he's done, to help you start making amends with Rose."

"Okay." When the bridges came into sight, Trip swallowed. "When did it start?"

"What?"

"The dream-house."

Ben didn't look at her. "Six, maybe seven months ago. Ours isn't the only one, of course."

"...Of course," she said softly.

Ben surprised her by reaching out and flipping her hair, but his eyes were sad. "It's not a perfect solution, but it's all we have until we figure out how to keep the withdrawal under control."

"Dreaming instead of living..." Trip said. "That's not a solution."

"Maybe not," Ben said. "But what else is there?"

"I don't know."

Ben took Nash's bag from her. "And that's why Rose thinks you should never have unplugged them a year ago. They look to you for answers, Trip."

"I don't have any," she muttered, sullen and childish. "I didn't even realize there were questions."

"Listen," Ben said, and waved to Nash at the gate. "Be careful."

Trip nodded unconsciously, but Ben grasped both her hands in his. "No, _listen_. Damn it, Trip, listen to me. This one time, listen. For your dad's sake, and your own."

"I _am_ listening." But she kept her head down, scowling.

Ben tried to meet her eyes. "God...I keep forgetting. You're your father, definitely, but I keep forgetting the other half."

Trip's head snapped up. "Mom?"

"She had fire, too," he said. "And when she didn't get her way, she pouted." He lifted Trip's chin with his fist when she tried to duck down again. "Yeah, like that."

"You never talk much about Mom," Trip said. "It's always Dad."

"Yeah," Ben said, and his hand dropped back to his side. "Well, she's hard to remember right."

They reached the bridges and Nash took his bag from Ben. "Ready?"

"Yeah, in a sec," Ben said. "Trip."

She had the insane urge to throw her arms around his waist, to use herself as a boat anchor. "Yeah?"

"Be careful."

Trip smiled, somehow. "You said that already."

"No, you..."

Ben looked at Nash, who shrugged. "Shouldn't be leaving her alone, though," Nash said.

"She'll be fine, if she keeps her head on." Ben turned back to her. "Trip, I still don't know what's going on here. If I thought anyone could get to Granville instead of me, I'd stay here. But Graham..." His eyes went distant and unfocused. "I can't."

"Don't worry about us," Trip said, with confidence she barely felt. "We'll be fine. Get help for Graham. I'd go for you if I could."

"I know," Ben said. "I know that. Thank you."

It hurt, pushing the last reliable things away from her and out into the wilderness, but Trip lifted her head and flipped her hands out to get them moving. "Go on. The sooner you get there, the sooner you can haul Lee back by the scruff of his neck."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Ben said. "Come here."

He hugged Trip tight, and she did her best to let go again when he moved away. "You'll be fine," he said. "Remember to think before you act—think about what I'd do, or what your father would do. Take care of everyone, and try not to beat down any more doors."

"Okay."

"And if all else fails, I'll be back soon."

"Right," she said, and swallowed tellingly.

"Ready?" he asked Nash.

Nash paused a moment, and gazed at Trip. She must have failed at looking confident and bored, because he leaned in close. "The cocoa is in my kitchen, cupboard over the sink, on the left."

Before she could answer, he straightened and looked to Ben. "Let's go, boss."

Ben flipped Trip's hair one more time, for good measure. "See you in a few days. Help Marla when you can."

She climbed the watchtower to see them go. Trip couldn't remember a time she'd had to watch Ben marching out of the settlement with a pack strapped to his back. He'd always been close, always within hand's-reach at the clinic, or somewhere else on the settlement, fixing machines and people with equal frequency. Watching him turn his head to say something to Nash, already too far for her to even hear the murmur of his voice, and flickering out of sight beyond the rocky bend, was like losing her father all over again.

The guard didn't say anything when she folded down the second perch and huddled there, just in case Ben changed his mind and came back.

* * *

><p>Monkey had gotten Trip's note about his bike days ago, that they thought they had the parts, but not enough time or expertise to make a good job of it just yet. So he spent a day or two in the canyon, gathering specialty bits and pieces of machinery that he could use to make a clean swap without fussing too much with their insides. It wasn't clean work, but it was the most reliable way to get the bike working again, and it wasn't like he wasn't used to fixing things piecemeal.<p>

The sun was high and scorching treacherously early that day, and Monkey felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth long before midmorning. He gave up on a full haul for the day and started back up relatively early, and it was probably only by that chance that the child didn't die on his doorstep.

Monkey didn't see him at first. When he came up out of the canyon, Monkey's eyes were filled with dust and grit that clung to his eyelashes like spiderwebs. He scrubbed them out of his eyes with a finger and squinted, trying to determine if he was seeing a scrap of burlap of some kind that had blown up against the wall. As he got closer, he could make out individual lines that told him that there were other, sharper shapes, paler than the bulk of it but not by much, and Monkey realized he was seeing a child, half-dead already, curled up against his front door.

The bag slipped from his hand and landed with a rattle and a small plume of dust. Monkey didn't hear it, and didn't hear the blood thundering in his ears as he approached. There were any number of reasons this could be a trap, but none of them made sense at the moment. He didn't see footprints along the way to the road, and he hadn't yet had a whiff of the telltale stench of raiders who might be planning an ambush, with the child as bait. Monkey couldn't help but feel he was being watched, regardless, and came up to the child with both hands tensed.

If there was a trap, it didn't immediately spring when he stepped up to the door. The child was dazed and weak, like a baby bird that had flown full-tilt into a pane of glass. At first, Monkey couldn't even tell if it was a boy or girl. The hair hung in ragged chunks from the child's head, long for a boy or short for a girl. He reached out, almost scared to make contact, and brushed the hair up out of the child's face.

It was a boy, maybe Wren's age but not a day more. Monkey was almost surprised to see breath billowing in and out of the boy's chest, and he realized he'd already expected the child to be dead. Monkey took in the sight of the boy's bare, relatively uncut feet almost unconsciously—whoever the child was, he hadn't walked to the canyon himself. Monkey fingered the area around a clumsy puncture wound in the boy's upper arm, a little thicker than a standard needle stab, and the boy opened his eyes.

Monkey knew, without question, that there wasn't any point in hurrying the boy to Liberty. The child gazed through Monkey with cloudy, enslaved-unfocused eyes, blue as the sky over the desert. He was light as kindling in Monkey's hands, as if lifting him the wrong way would splinter bone. Monkey pulled gently until he had the boy in his arms, his legs dangling like cracked, hollow glass against his chest, and carried him inside.

* * *

><p>That first day after Ben left, Trip spent half her time with Neil, lending a hand with his concoctions for the enslaved without having the faintest idea what he was directing her to do. The rest of the day was spent trying to convince the guard at the dream-house that she wasn't there to knock down any more doors, and they could come straight to her for sedatives from now on. He accepted the first batch suspiciously, as if she'd intentionally marred it somehow, and shut the door in her face.<p>

She realized, as early as the next morning, that the word Harold and Sophie used so freely was more common in Liberty than she had thought. She only heard it when she was listening for it, and when people didn't see her. The dream-house, to everyone else, was a vegetable stand, and something rankled in the back of Trip's mind. She'd never have heard it, used that way, but the phrase was almost always followed by a burst of scornful laughter.

She made the mistake of asking Neil about it when she came back to the lab, and he chuckled unkindly at hearing the phrase coming out of her mouth.

"So why are you helping them?" she demanded, angry and embarrassed. "You're mixing all this up for them, aren't you?"

Neil ground something in a pestle and measured it out carefully. "I guess. It's just work."

"Neil."

He looked at her, his face hollowed out by the fluorescent lights. "I can't say it without it sounding bad."

"Say what?" she asked, but his face stayed closed. "What, like you're doing them a favor, to make you feel good about it?"

"Something like that," he said, and pointed at a tube in front of her. "Hand me that."

She started to, when an alert rippled across her databand, and she eagerly turned aside to check it. Neil muttered something under his breath and grabbed the tube himself.

The alert was standard for something sighted on the horizon, visible via binoculars but not tripping anything on the sensor array. It usually meant a traveler on their way to Liberty, or an enslaved wandering nearby with a vague concept of where to find them, but no actual idea of how to get there. Trip flipped through the codes quickly. "You okay here?"

"It's not going to be Ben," Neil said, and poured a smoky liquid into a vial.

"No, of course not," Trip said. "But I should go anyway."

"Okay," Neil said. "Have fun."

She grabbed him by the sleeve of his lab coat, and Neil swore loudly as some of the liquid spilled. "Watch it!"

"Come on, lab rat," she said. "Let's go see what it is."

"Why?" he asked. "It doesn't concern me."

Trip peered in this face, close enough to make him uncomfortable. "You don't want to see them as they arrive? You just want to keep them drugged? What kind of person does that?"

Neil scoffed. "Please. You only just found out—"

Trip pinched his forearm, hard, and Neil snapped his arm back to dislodge her. "Fuck, get off!"

She released him quickly, a little surprised at the sudden rage. "Okay, fine. Stay here if you want to."

"That was the plan," Neil said.

"Jerk," Trip muttered, and tapped her databand. "I'll stop by later for the next batch."

She was two steps up the stairs to the outside when Neil stopped her. "By the way," he said, sneering. "No one knows anything about your dog."

"My dog?"

Neil sighed; the papers on his desk fluttered anxiously. "The dog you asked me about." When that was met with more bewildered silence, Neil gestured violently. "Fuck, why did I even bother? The one from Rider, remember?"

"Oh," Trip said. "_Oh_!"

Neil tipped the beaker too hard, and more liquid splashed onto the table. "No one knows anything about it. It's not possible to reprogram slaver bands like that. You'd have to be a genius to get halfway there."

Rider felt like years ago, and Trip was surprised to realize that she scarcely remembered the dog at all. "Oh. Well, thanks for checking."

"'Thanks for checking,'" Neil muttered back at her. "Unbelievable."

Trip left him there, grumbling angrily to himself, and headed for the perimeter.

* * *

><p>There was a small group gathered at the base of the tower. When she arrived, someone handed her a pair of binoculars. "There." His finger swayed in her line of sight, pointing out something she couldn't make out just yet. "Just ahead of that rock line."<p>

She swept the binoculars over the landscape briefly before finding him. It was a single man, bigger now on the horizon than he'd been when the alert first went off. The shape could mean anything, but she couldn't help but hope that it was Ben, even if it was selfish.

"Who is it?" she asked.

The man shrugged. "Can't tell."

"I'll go," Trip said, and shoved the binoculars back into his hands.

"Take someone with you," the guard at the watchtower shouted down. "Could be anything."

The man lifted the binoculars back to his eyes. "Whoever he is, he just face-planted. We should get a stretcher out there."

Trip remembered thinking that a stretcher was a good idea, but was halfway down the second set of bridges before she heard the voices wafting after her to stop for a second, to wait for someone to go with her, at least.

The man was face-down in the dirt, his fingers curled loosely around a gray-green clump of grass. She was fifty steps away when a twitch ran through his body and he folded over on his side, then started the slow process of pushing himself upright again.

He was wiry, or at least looked it in his loose clothing that might have once been any number of colors, but were now the same uniform, muddy brown. His shoes flapped uselessly as he tried to lever himself upwards, tripping him more than anything else. He was covered in dirt, head to toe, and Trip honestly could not tell what his skin even looked like under all that.

Trip had just about reached him just as he got his feet anchored against solid ground again, and he peered in every direction, trying to pin down where the noise of her footsteps was coming from. His head swiveled this way and that, somehow never quite finding her.

"Here," she called. "Hang on!"

The top half of the man's body swung in her direction, but the legs didn't follow suit, and he began to stumble forward. Trip beat gravity, just barely, and caught him by the arms as he swayed. "Whoa! You okay?"

He blinked into her face, inches away. "Hello."

"Hello," she said. He was sharp and thin under Trip's hands, but his half-numb legs made him heavy. "I got you," she said. "I think."

He smiled at her, and his teeth, at least, were salt-white and even. "Hello," he said again.

"Yes, hello." Trip started to bow under the numb weight of him as she heard the others approaching. "Could use some help here!" she called out.

The man reached up and had forefinger and thumb clasped in her hair before she realized what he was doing. She glanced at him in surprise, and his eyes stared out at her, bright and clear, from his dirt-streaked face.

Trip tried her best not to drop him. "We're from Liberty—we'll take care of you."

His eyes drooped halfway shut, then made an effort to open as he smiled up into her face. "Sorry, I'm a little gone," he said, rasping faintly on a dry tongue. "Be all right soon."

"Sure," she said. "It's okay. I'm Trip, by the way."

"Oh, yes. Names, sorry." He smiled, charmingly enough, and tried to force himself upright without her help. "I'm Jason. Pleased to meet you."

"Well, pl—" Trip started, just as Jason's eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed, and the rest of the group from the watchtower arrived with the stretcher.


	10. Burning Bridges

Ten: Burning Bridges

* * *

><p>When Trip was a child, she tended to fall asleep at her father's side, the vidscreen lights the last things in her eyes before they slid shut. She saw lines of numbers, and schematics for the settlement, and the dozen other things her father would work on late into the night. He let her stay with him most times, so late she ended up propped up against him like slowly melting ice, her hands dangling limply at her sides. On those nights, he'd carry her to her bed, half-protesting somehow, and she'd wake in the morning without any memory of how she got there.<p>

Trip remembered this, totally irrationally, as they bore Jason's stretcher up through the narrow streets of the city to the clinic.

Their procession made it halfway to the clinic before seeming to recall that Ben and anyone else who had the slightest idea of what to do with their charge was absent. They held a brief, huddled discussion over Jason, who didn't stir or seem to mind, and one of them detached from the group to find Rose.

Trip jogged alongside, surprised at how fast they were able to maneuver through the gates and crowded streets. People parted for them quickly, used to the interruption, and zipped shut behind them. Jason's head bounced between the sides of the stretcher as they went, very possibly making the short jump between unconsciousness and dim awareness with each step.

Trip stayed near the head of the stretcher, to make sure he didn't spill from it if his small company came to a short stop, and was only able to catch quick glimpses of his face as they went. He was closer to Ben's age than hers, maybe just into his thirties. The sun had baked color right into his skin, and the rest of it was streaks of dirt smeared like fingerpaint. She wondered distantly if he'd crawled any part of the distance to Liberty, and what on earth might have made him try.

Rose caught up with them just as they reached the clinic. She shushed them with an expression of impatient sainthood, took one look at the man, and tutted at the general state of things. Trip stood on tiptoe to see what Rose saw, but the stretcher was whisked inside quickly, and the look Rose gave Trip said in no uncertain terms that she was to stay on the wrong side of the door.

Before Trip and the others were even a quarter of the way back across the square, the front door swung open again, and an indignant and spluttering Geoff was pushed out into the sunlight.

"The hell?" he demanded. "So what if he's—yeah, I _see_ that, but why can't I work on the bike at the same time?"

They heard the screeching, but not the words, and Geoff swore at the door as it snapped shut on him, too.

"Same to you!" he shouted, and the men from the watchtower laughed.

The guard at Trip's side snorted. "She'll fight for that one, since she's seen the scars."

"How could you even tell?" Trip asked. "He was filthy."

He splayed his fingers over his temple, and Trip was surprised to see slaver scars on him. "You just have to know where to look. His were old, but they're there."

"Huh," Trip said grudgingly. "At least he's in good hands?"

"Well, she's not Ben, but he'll live if it's nothing serious. Unless she talks him to death when he comes to."

The group went back to the watchtower, but Trip waited for Geoff to stomp over, his face stormy.

"Bitch," he said, meaning Rose, when he'd gotten in range. "What's her problem?"

"Same problem as always," Trip said. "Did you get a good look at him?"

Geoff rolled his shoulders forward, in order to shrug at her and keep his hands in his pockets at the same time. "Not really. Why?"

"Enslaved?"

"Dunno. I guess that'd explain why Rose kicked me out the door. What did she think I was going to do?"

"Slug him, probably."

Geoff made a short, arrogant noise in the back of his throat, but his hands tightened in his pockets. "Right, like we're suddenly freelifers."

"We couldn't have known. It's not worth worrying about." Trip meant the dream-house, and the ugly looks in the street.

"Tell you what," Geoff said, and his tone was nasty. "I'll believe you when you sound like _you_ believe it."

He looked exhausted and bedraggled, even more than usual, and his eyes twitched a second behind each blink.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Fine," he grumbled. "What are you doing here?"

They couldn't hear anything from the clinic, but Trip could well imagine Rose sifting through Ben's supplies, tossing what she didn't need with a recklessness that prickled her skin. "We found Jason outside. I helped bring him in."

"Huh," Geoff said, unimpressed. "Jason, huh?"

"What? You know him?"

Geoff scrubbed the tip of one oil-smudged finger with forefinger and thumb. "Nah. You just don't usually know their names."

Trip started to reply, but realized Jason's was the only name she had learned in a long time. "Can I ask you something?" she said instead.

He gazed at her, practically drunk on lack of sleep. "What?"

"Have you heard of the Bone Man?"

Geoff's face furrowed. "I guess. It's a kid thing. Like the bogeyman."

"So, not real?"

He shrugged. "I guess. I mean, the story changes, depending where you go. Sometimes it's Bone Man, sometimes it's the Shaman, sometimes it's just raiders."

Trip bit back amazement at all the stories that were quarantined from her childhood. "But it's just nonsense?"

"No. Of course people disappear sometimes. So everyone says, you know, it was the Bone Man or whatever, and everyone talks about it for a while."

"But they have to know it isn't Monkey," Trip said, mostly to herself.

"Mark's an idiot. They won't believe it."

"Yeah," Trip said, but it lacked conviction.

"Well," Geoff said, "they might be idiots, too."

He turned his head away from her to yawn again. The right side of his face was still swollen and bruised an ugly blue-black, with edges that were only just turning green. His eyes were heavy and shadowed, as bad as Ben's had been at Graham's sickbed, and he stumbled through half as many steps as landed well. Monkey could weather these things, or Ben or Nash. But Geoff was young, and Trip kept forgetting it.

"I'm sorry about...all of this," she said, and reached out to touch his cheek.

He jerked away. "So what are we doing about Monkey?"

"What are we doing?" she repeated stupidly.

"To prove he's innocent. Mark's got dragonflies out all the time. What're we doing to help Monkey?"

Mark must have been reaching out to other settlements, trying to dig up whatever dirt he could find. There should be nothing, would be nothing, but the feeling in Trip's stomach twisted, all the same.

"He won't find anything," Trip said. "They'll either not know him, or know he sells scrap. But it's not like anyone's going to tell him that Monkey's the one taking kids."

"Yeah, well we should be doing something."

"I want to," Trip said. "But I've already listened to the reports. There's nothing there."

He snarled at her, half-heartedly. "Mark's going to convince everyone if we don't help."

"I trust Monkey," Trip said.

"You know what?" Geoff asked, but didn't wait for her answer. "I think you might be the only one."

The cold that had been winding around Trip's chest clenched tight. "That's stupid. What about you and Wren?"

Geoff rolled his eyes. "Me and Wren, _duh_. And Marla. But since Ben's gone..."

"Since Ben's gone—what?"

He shut his eyes for long seconds until Trip wanted to shake the answer out of him. "_What_, Geoff?"

"You should hear people talking," he said simply.

* * *

><p>An hour before the boy died, Monkey remembered Heather.<p>

When Pyramid went offline, the enslaved's response had been widespread and immediate. Some of them collapsed, a few began sobbing, but most stood exactly as they were, locked in stunned, animal-dumb silence. As time passed, more and more of them remembered how to speak, and the questions started, scattered at first, but finally a shared roar of one-word questions. They all looked so similar in their Pyramid jumpsuits, Monkey couldn't see them as individuals then—just a moving, breathing mass of trouble that Trip had dumped into their hands when she disconnected the old man. There was no way he'd remember every one of them who never came out of that first stage, who never said another word.

But he remembered her now.

He remembered because she had the same sort of almost-gone look that this boy did. He'd seen her, once, on their way out, and her eyes had been empty and too wide, tracking after things too slowly. She had one foot in death the moment they left, and didn't last more than ten miles into the desert before getting the rest of the way there.

Small wonder Rose hated him, if he couldn't remember a thing like that.

Monkey dipped a rag in what cool water he had left and draped it over the boy's forehead. He'd laid the boy out flat on his workbench, since the hammock would have swallowed him whole. The boy's narrow chest rose and fell too erratically, sometimes stopping on the fall too long before rebounding.

Death from sickness had a smell, sort of like over-ripe fruit, decayed and sickly-sweet. But the boy didn't smell like anything. He was shriveled and creased like crumpled paper, with an old man's breathing in his chest. The boy hadn't regained consciousness since he carried him inside, but Monkey couldn't imagine he knew he was dying, much less what from.

There was no question the boy was one of the missing children, but there was no telling when he was taken, or from where. The age range was right, but how he'd ended up on Monkey's doorstep, practically hand-delivered, wasn't something he had time to worry about yet.

"What's your name?" Monkey asked, but had no idea what he'd do with an answer.

The boy's eyelids fluttered, but he didn't stir. His heart hammered under his skinny chest, nothing more than ribs and a thin layer of skin half-burnt by the summer sun.

Monkey turned the boy's right arm to him, twisting it gently to see the deep, careless needle stab that buried itself under skin and well into muscle. The wound was just starting to fester, but wasn't far enough along to poison blood. Monkey wiped it with cool water but didn't bother disinfecting it.

"Hey," he said, a little louder. "What's your name?"

It was a few seconds before the boy's eyes snapped open. He stared blankly at the ceiling, the walls, at every object in the room before finally finding Monkey's face. When he did, there was no intelligence left in his eyes—just a kind of simple shock, as if he weren't used to seeing people.

His mind had gone days ago, maybe more, and his body was catching up.

Monkey reached up and wrapped his hand around the boy's, dwarfing it. "Hey, can you hear me? What's your name?"

The boy hadn't been skinny for long. His bones poked out at odd angles, but he had baby fat around his cheeks, as if he'd lost weight quickly and it hadn't evened out yet. His tendons were wiry and sharp under Monkey's fingers.

"Come on," Monkey said. "You gotta tell me your name, at least."

He stood in surprise as the boy's spine arced up, bowing him over the workbench. The boy clenched his teeth and scraped his broken fingernails along the wood, and his eyes rolled up until all Monkey could see was vein-cracked whites.

Monkey cradled the boy's head to take some of the pressure off it, and carefully set it back down as the boy went limp. The boy's arm flopped to his side and knocked over the cup of water Monkey had waiting for him.

Monkey waited a few more minutes to see if the boy would seize again, but he seemed quiet. Monkey took the chance to take the upended cup and refill it. He was only up for a moment, but when he came back, the boy had angled toward him, seemingly lucid, as he watched Monkey come back to the workbench.

"Hey there," Monkey said, and settled next to him again. "Drink this."

He lifted the boy up halfway, feeling the pinprick edges that were his shoulder blades under the threadbare shirt. The boy's lips cracked and bled as he took the rim of the cup in his mouth, but he didn't so much as whimper. He did his best to swallow, but most of the water trickled out of the corners of his mouth and dripped from his chin. Absentmindedly, Monkey wiped it with the back of his hand. "Can you do better than that? Come on."

The boy tried to focus on him and made a guttural noise. "Mmm?" he tried, then, "Mom? W...whuh..."

"Not here. But I'll find her for you. What's your name?"

The kid fought around a word, slipping through sounds as they escaped. Monkey could see him fading, as if that bit of water had been enough to wash what was left of him away.

"Come on," he said. "I'm Monkey. What's your name?"

Panic flashed over the boy's face. He tried, really tried, to get a name out, but Monkey was suddenly certain that the kid had no idea what his name even was any more.

Monkey wrung out the rag and dipped it in water again. "It's okay. Don't worry about it." The rag was practically too heavy for the boy's head, seeming to press him down, flatten out what was left of him.

The boy tried to fix his gaze on Monkey, but it took him a few tries. "S...sleep...y..."

"Yeah," Monkey said. "I bet you are. Go to sleep."

The kid's eyes drifted shut, but one didn't close all the way, as if it were stuck. "Ssstay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere." Monkey squeezed his hand. "You go to sleep."

"'Kay," he said, and moved his fingers just slightly in Monkey's.

His breathing evened out for a while after that. Monkey set fingertips on the boy's chest, over his heart, feeling the rhythm change. There was no galloping panic, or uneven flutter. Just a sort of dulling, where the rhythm drew out and altered with the boy's breathing, as if these simple things had become too difficult to orchestrate.

Monkey stayed at the workbench, scarcely moving, as the boy's breaths grew further and further apart, and waited.

* * *

><p>It was nearly a day before Trip had the chance to see Jason again. She went back to Neil's once, though not right away. When she did, his door was locked, and he didn't respond to her knocking. She wandered the city after that, avoiding the places Mark might be, for fear of seeing success in his face.<p>

She stopped by Ben's, to check on Graham and see if Marla was ready to relinquish her vigil. Marla let her stop in long enough to press a kiss to her fingertips and transfer them to Graham, but he didn't stir, and his skin still glistened with fever. Then she was shooed away kindly but firmly, and was told she'd get word if anything changed.

In the end, Trip took over watchtower five, after making sure Mark wasn't anywhere near. It was one of the further towers, and one they left unmanned for the quieter times of the year. Trip set up a little station there, set the radio alerts as low as she could while still being able to hear them, and set out her databand and copies of the chips from Mark's dragonflies.

Granville was organized, she had to give them that. The reports were the same, business-like relays of data—the who, when and where—sometimes followed by a plea from the family, as if the man who had taken them would hear the desperation in their voices and turn their loved ones back out onto the road. Trip's heart ached to hear them, the mothers and fathers calling out for a Zach or a Ross or a Piper, but the radio was only ever one-way into the wasteland.

She finally forced herself to listen only to the first part of the transmission, the part that might help. She jotted down the dates and coordinates of each abduction on a scrap of paper, using a worn-down nub of a pencil, and carefully programmed them back into her databand. She overlaid them on the maps her dragonflies had completed over the past year, and belatedly wished she had thought to hole up in the war room instead, where at least she wouldn't be scrunched into the corner of the tower to protect herself from the wind.

Her databand charge was waning, and she had to squint to fix each point in her mind. Liberty was at the center of her map, but the nearest abduction point was miles off, and she flicked the map in that direction. The dragonflies were never able to capture much more than the faintest outlines of basic structures, ghost-like afterimages that were only good for educated guesses. She could make out Rider, Granville, and city ruins to the south. She could see Monkey's scrapyard, too, and the pale, scraggly line that meant the river to the north.

Once the map was pieced together, Trip fed in the coordinates of the abductions, as close as Granville had them. There were eight in all, over a period of two months, and she marked each of them, one by one, until the glow of the map glittered like the night sky.

She was too close to make any sense of the scattered dots, so she snatched the edges of the map and pinched them in, until she was so far away that the map gapped at the edges, where her dragonflies still hadn't been able to reach.

From this distance, it was easier to see that the dots were close together, less than ten miles in any direction from one to the next. Never more than a few hours' walk. Trip pinched her chin in her hand and folded over, thinking.

She was so deep in thought that when Wren's head popped up over the top rail to the watchtower, Trip very nearly tumbled off her perch.

Wren's forehead crinkled in judgment. "You're not very good at keeping watch. I shouted three times."

"Well..." Trip said, but couldn't think of a valid excuse. "I'm working on something. Sorry."

Trip extended her hand and helped Wren climb onto the platform. "What's up?"

Wren shook her hand off sooner than Trip would have been comfortable with, that close to the platform edge. She eyed Trip's databand. "What're you doing?"

"Oh, it's..." Trip considered the map. "Nothing exciting."

Wren settled down next to her, and Trip had to scoot over to make room. "Is that us?" Wren asked, her finger more or less where Liberty was.

"Yep, that's us, and everything around. There's the river, see? And the city?"

"Mm-hm. What're the dots?"

"Those are..." Trip blinked at the lights in sudden misgiving. "Well..."

Wren looked up at her with big, grey-green eyes. "Are you trying to find the Bone Man?"

"How did—" Trip shuddered on Wren's behalf. "Where did you hear that?"

"Radios," Wren said simply. "Geoff gets them and listens."

"And you're always there, aren't you?" Trip asked, mostly to herself, and thought about the logistics of keeping a pair of hands over Wren's ears at all times. "Let's not call it that, okay?"

"But this is where kids are going missing?" Wren insisted. "Right?"

Trip hesitated. "Yes, but I don't want you to worry about it, please? You don't need to be scared."

"I'm not scared." Wren was practically in her lap, trying to see what Trip had on display. "Move, please," she said, impatient but still polite, and Trip blew fondly into Wren's wayward hair.

They sat in silence for a minute, watching the lights waver as the databand's power fluctuated.

"Every dot is...someone who got taken by the Bone Man?" Wren asked.

"That's just what they're saying," Trip said, trying to make it sound like even that was unreliable and probably nonsense.

"All at the same time?"

"Well...no," Trip said, and really thought about that. "Good point. But I don't want you to—"

"Show me?"

Wren gazed at the map, expecting immediate action, then up at Trip when it didn't happen.

"Wren," Trip said helplessly. "You don't need to help. Go play, okay?"

Wren curled up. "They're saying it's Monkey."

There was a sudden surge of ice in Trip's gut, so sharp that it hurt. "Who's saying that?"

"Mark," Wren said quietly. "Rose. The other kids. Everyone."

"Well, they're wrong."

Wren was quiet for another moment, then lifted her head. "I'll help." Her chin jutted out a tiny bit. "I _am_ helping. When were they?"

Trip shut her eyes and pressed a kiss into Wren's hair, and stayed there too long. When Wren shifted, Trip turned her attention back to the data.

"Okay, so, they weren't all taken on the same day. If we can figure out when and where, maybe we can help Monkey, right?"

Wren gnawed at her lip. "Like...who's at the watchtowers and who's not. Like if someone doesn't make it on time and they're supposed to be there."

"Good girl."

Trip reorganized the reports by date, re-submitted them to the map, and she and Wren watched as the lights blinked back on.

"Huh," she said, and Wren hummed to herself. "They're expanding from one place. Like someone's pushing out from there, farther every time."

"Where is this?" Wren asked, and pushed her finger through the gathering of dots.

"That is..." Trip tried to consult the rest of the information on her databand without dislodging Wren. "It's a ravine. Or a waterfall or something. The land drops off right there—" She pointed, and Wren peered closely, as if she could actually see the landscape changing. "—and slowly rises on the other side."

"No cities?"

"No. And no settlements." Trip bit her lip. "No one at all."

"Where's Monkey?" Wren asked, and Trip knew she was asking to see the scrapyard on the map.

Trip pulled the display farther out. "Over there."

"So it's not Monkey," Wren said. "Mark's wrong."

Trip smiled sadly. "People believe all kinds of stuff when they're scared."

"Where was Monkey?" Wren said. "When they went missing?"

"Not here," Trip sad. "I checked."

Wren twisted to look at her. "Where does he go?"

"I don't know," Trip said, and felt Wren's surprise. "He doesn't tell me. It would help, though."

She tried not to linger on that, but Monkey's secrecy was suddenly a lot less harmless than it used to be.

Wren rolled off of Trip's leg and stood. "Rose wanted you."

"Me?" Trip flipped the display off. "And you waited to tell me?"

Wren shrugged, unapologetic, and Trip groaned and stood. "Did she tell you what she wanted?"

"She said he's awake, and he wants to talk to you."

"Jason?"

Wren tipped her head to the side, replaying Rose's voice in her memory. "He wants to thank you for getting him."

"Okay." Trip suddenly thought of Jason's sunburnt face, gaunt but still alert, peering up into hers. "Thanks for telling me. But the next time you bring a message, give the message _first_, okay?"

"Okay," Wren said, without apparent regret.

Trip eased the sore points on her backside, where she'd been pressed against cold wood for too long. "Coming with me?" she asked, and Wren nodded.

* * *

><p>The door to the clinic was slightly ajar, but Trip wasn't in the mood for chances, and she made a point of knocking before sticking her head inside.<p>

Jason, if it was still him, so clean he no longer looked like he'd crawled on elbows and knees through an ocean of mud, sat upright on the infirmary bed, and was smiling as Rose stopped mid-laugh to turn to the intruders. She gave them a quick once-over, seemed to remember that she'd summoned Trip herself, and turned back to Jason. "They got it moving, really?"

Jason's mouth twitched sideways. "Well, in a manner of speaking. It was too rickety to trust the first couple of years, and it stalled a lot, but I think they finally worked it out."

"A rail system," Rose sighed. "No catwalks or bridges or other nonsense. Real, honest-to-goodness transportation."

Jason shrugged. "It takes a lot to power it, though. It's a lot of Granville's energy."

"Worth it," Rose said. "Every minute."

Trip cleared her throat gently, and Rose whirled on her. "Ah, Trip!" she said, in a false cheerfulness that was utterly terrifying. "There you are!"

"Here I am," Trip agreed warily. "Wren said you wanted me?"

Trip was wise enough to know that handling Rose would be trickier now, and she smiled harmlessly at Rose's immediate suspicion that she Trip was somehow making fun of her.

"Jason asked for you," she said, and somehow put razors behind it that only Trip could hear.

Jason smiled. "Well, I wanted to thank you." He looked to Rose. "Could we have a minute? Do you mind?"

"Heavens, no, not at all," Rose said, but the force of the lie she had to put into it could have knocked him over if he'd been standing. She stood and smoothed out her dress self-consciously. "Take all the time you need. I'm off to find a pair of scissors, anyway."

"Scissors?" Jason asked.

Rose gave him a feral smile. "It's about time someone did a proper job with that mess you call hair. How long have you been cutting it yourself?"

Jason went pale. "I...uh..."

"That's what I thought," Rose said. She had time for one last poisonous glance at Trip before sweeping out of the clinic. The door banged shut behind her, a little harder than Trip thought necessary, and Wren jumped slightly behind her.

"Well!" Jason said. "She's something else, isn't she?"

"Mm," Trip said, not daring to mean anything by it, and Jason smiled.

He was still sun-baked, tanner than most of them, though not by much. But the gauntness was gone from his face already, and his skin no longer pinched the way it would after days out in the heat. He wasn't like Ben in any way, but he was more or less the same size, and Trip noted with some surprise that Rose must have convinced Marla to hand over some of Ben's clothes, because Jason was wearing one of Ben's older sweaters, with a pair of nondescript working pants that hung loose around his bare feet.

And Trip could understand Rose's schoolgirl-like, practically coquettish laughter at anything and everything Jason said. He had been handsome once, or maybe still was, under the scars that were white and bloodless creases on his skin, far older than the rest of the enslaved's marks. They were sloppier than most, too, webbing out from his temples and passing through his left eyebrow, tearing through it like a blade scored deep over his face, years ago.

His nose was recently broken, too, still slightly jagged and swollen, and she wondered, for no reason at all, if it would heal well.

"—dehydration, mostly," Jason was saying, and Trip snapped to.

"Yeah, you have to be careful with that," she said. "We get a lot of people who don't think to pack any water, somehow, and what you find along the road isn't safe to drink, usually."

Jason smiled at her indulgently, then tilted his head to the side to look behind her. "Hi there," he said. "I didn't say hi before, did I? I'm Jason."

Wren curled her fingers into the back of Trip's shirt.

"Go on," Trip said. "You're going to have to get used to meeting people eventually."

Wren shook her head.

"It's the scars, I think," Jason said. "It scares kids sometimes."

"I've seen _scars_, and I'm not a kid." Wren said it with disdain and conviction, then ruined the effect by pushing off of Trip like a springboard and racing outside.

The door banged shut behind her, and Trip shrugged in explanation. "Wren's weird around strangers. Don't let it bother you."

"I'm not." Jason swung his legs around the bed and stood, only swaying slightly. "Let's go."

"Let's go _what_?" Trip asked in alarm. "Should you be walking yet?"

Jason started pulling on socks and a pair of Ben's old work boots. His fingers, still a few seconds behind the rest of him, fumbled a bit with the worn laces. "She thinks she's going to cut my hair."

It wouldn't do him much harm. He certainly looked like he just tumbled out of the wilderness. "And you're not interested?"

"No," he said, curtly, and straightened. "Any chance you could give me a tour?"

"Of Liberty?" Trip asked. "Sure, I guess. But it's really just...well, catwalks and bridges, like Rose said. And turbines, if you like those."

"Who doesn't like turbines?"

Trip couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, so she shrugged. "Then let's go before Rose finds her scissors."

* * *

><p>All Monkey had was a sheet, cleaner than most of what he owned, though still threadbare and practically translucent. He did the best he could, anyway, and carefully wrapped the boy like a would-be butterfly, folding and re-folding the fabric around the thin arms to keep them at his sides. Monkey did all this without looking at the boy's face. He hadn't been able to since he pressed his eyelids closed and all but felt the life lift from him, and a different sort of heaviness settled in its place.<p>

When the boy was properly swaddled, Monkey lifted him in his arms, even more gently than he had when he'd found him hours ago, and held him close to his chest as he took him outside. The last time Monkey had had to bury someone, there had been half a dozen hands alongside his own, to help lift dirt and sand away to make room in the earth. But this was entirely his for now, and the boy grew lighter and lighter in his grasp as he walked.

First, he had to find a place to put him, safe from scavengers and sun, then he had to find someone who could make more sense of it than he had.

He had to get back to Liberty.

* * *

><p>Jason wanted to see and examine every nut, bolt, and bit of wiring in the settlement. He had bright, keen eyes that flickered restlessly over everything, from the gate system to the catwalks to the water pumps. He walked around the main turbine two or three times, asking pointed questions that caught Trip by surprise. When she told him about the new sail, he seemed impressed.<p>

"Ben did most of it," Trip said, to give credit where it was due. "It'd still be broken if he weren't here."

"I'd like to meet him," Jason said. "This is some good work."

"He'll be back. He went to Granville. His son's sick."

"That's too bad," Jason said, only half-hearing her on his fourth circuit around the turbine. "Why didn't the safety release work?"

"Huh?" Trip gazed up at the turbine, trying to remember the storm. "I don't know. It jammed a lot, that's all."

Jason muttered something, and she felt a blush flare up under her collar.

He was smiling when he was done circling the main turbine. "What's next?"

So she led him on a tour that she made up as they went along. They went through the market, just after its peak hour, and still had to shout over the noise. Jason met the curious residents with good humor, and let them pick at Ben's clothes on him. He refused offers of better clothes, better accommodations, and Trip stood back and watched them group around him in quiet amazement.

The enslaved paid more attention to him than the rest. They approached in pockets, some new to Liberty, others from the march across the desert, but they all greeted him with warm hands and soft smiles. Trip almost missed the look between Jason and a few of the older ones, a sort of knowing glance, brothers from the same country, and she had to glance at her shoes when one of the younger women reached toward his scars and traced a finger over his eyebrow.

"Okay," Trip said at last, as the woman peered into Jason's face as if seeing sunlight there. "Time to go."

"What?" he asked, without turning. The woman gave Trip a sharp, unwelcome look.

"Or stay here if you want," Trip said, but she wondered if he'd ever surface again if he did. "I'm due on watch."

Jason delicately stepped away from the woman and came after Trip. "I'll come with you. I saw some of them on the way in. Do you actually use those ziplines?"

"Sure, we use them," Trip said, but Jason was already ahead of her.

The crowd lingered behind, even as Trip and Jason headed down the walk toward the perimeter. They weren't all women, Trip noted, but it was a majority.

"Building your fan base already?" Trip asked, half joking, but Jason was looking thoughtful and took a moment to smile.

* * *

><p>It was windy and cool up at the watchtower, so much that goosebumps rose along Trip's arms. She pushed herself into a corner, near the dragonflies, and Jason took the second perch on the opposite side. He ran his hand along the old, weather-tired wood, and folded himself neatly, out of the wind.<p>

"Not much to see up here," Trip said, and flicked her hand toward the wasteland. "Ever since...well, a year ago. The most we've ever had to deal with is panthers. And a scorpion once, but that was closer to Rider."

Jason whistled low. "A scorpion?"

"Yeah. It was...God, big as a dog. Fast. Ridiculously fast. Have you ever seen one?"

Jason hesitated. "No."

"You're lucky," she said. "If it hadn't been for Monkey..."

She let the wind carry his name off, away from Liberty.

"At some point, you're going to have to tell me who he is," Jason said.

Trip bolted upright. "Why, what have you heard?"

"Just...people talking."

People talking wasn't helpful. "Like?" Trip prompted.

Jason wrestled visibly to find something kind to say, or at least something reassuring, and Trip felt another spark of hope blink out. "That he came with you, from Pyramid..." He let that fade out. "And he has some shack out at the canyon."

"That's it?"

"More or less," Jason said, and stared right into her face, not even having the decency to lie with his eyes off hers.

"Monkey is..." Describing Monkey was never easy, because he conjured up feelings more than words. "He's...well. He's Monkey. When I was captured, he found me, and we came back here."

Jason frowned. "And Pyramid?"

"I'm sure...someone told you," Trip said. "But...when we got back, Pyramid had been here. Everyone in the town was dead. A few escaped, but mostly..."

The wind stung her cheeks, and she stopped for a moment. "So," she said, after the wind died, "we went after Pyramid. Me and Monkey."

Jason leaned forward, his eyes sharp. "And what?"

Trip laughed, and it hurt, like laughter was something new and raw. "And we killed him. We _killed_ him, and destroyed the slaver bands, and tore it all to pieces."

Jason's hands clenched in his lap. "You did? All of it?"

Trip smiled at him, and his hands relaxed, as if he consciously had to disengage his knuckles from each other. "Yeah. Every bit of it. He's never coming after us again."

Some wild emotion thrashed in Jason's eyes, and Trip understood. It was hard to explain that to people, that Pyramid was gone, like exorcising a demon that had become as sure and old as the sun.

The radio spit a burst of crackling static at them, and they both jumped. Trip twisted the dial absentmindedly. "So," she said, when the static failed to resolve into speech. "Where are you from?"

"Ehh," Jason said, thinking. "Waterstone, for a few years. Quarry Point. Daveland."

"_Daveland_?" Trip asked.

Jason snort-laughed. "Some guy named Dave. City of one. I only passed through, thank God. He wore this...pot...over his head, like—" He held both hands up, palms facing in. "I think he cooked in the same pot."

"That sounds nice," Trip said, and meant anything but. "Where did you live last? And why'd you come here?"

Jason gave her a curious look, like she'd asked him something unexpected. "Well, Webster, for a year. That's where I was last. Then...you know."

Trip blinked at him. "Do I?"

They gazed at each other, waiting for the other to speak. Jason's mouth started to open once or twice, but quickly snapped shut on it again. He wrestled with it, whatever it was.

Trip's curiosity won. "What, already?"

"They come here," he said, and she tilted her head at him. "This is where the enslaved go, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but?"

Jason drummed still-ragged fingertips on the wood. "They don't tell you."

"They don't," Trip said, carefully. "I don't know why." She couldn't remember ever being good at lying, but she stood a better chance with a stranger.

Jason pushed his hair back from his temples. The scars were so different from what Trip usually saw on the enslaved that she leaned forward in spite of herself. Old scars, from years and years back, long before Pyramid came anywhere near home.

"You wear these for a while," Jason said, and pushed a fingertip up through his eyebrow, as if drawing the scar all over again. "And people start looking at you out of the corners of their eyes. If they look at you at all."

"Why?"

"They really don't tell you," Jason said, in slight wonder. "You, of all people."

"You could tell me."

Jason let his hair flop back into his face. "They come here," he said instead, "because there's nowhere else for them to be." He cut off her next question with another. "What about your Monkey? They said he was enslaved."

"Yeah," she said, and left it for a while.

The wind picked up again, howled around them like young wolves, and faded again. Jason's gaze flicked past her shoulder, but when she turned, there was nothing to see.

"He doesn't...tell me," Trip said, when she felt she could. "He's..."

"I thought you said he helped you," Jason said. "To Pyramid. But he won't tell you about what it did to him?"

Trip felt that same disconnect even sharper than usual. "No," she said, soft but angry. "He doesn't."

"He killed a scorpion to protect you," Jason said. "That has to count for something."

"You would _think_," she said, and knew she was being awful but didn't care.

Monkey was never talkative. He took pride in monosyllabic responses, when he thought they would suffice. But he answered her questions when they were important, in his own way, in his own time. But he never, ever told her about this.

"All I want..." she said, and stopped. When she started again, it was with fresh energy and venom. "You know, God, all I want is...I just want him to _tell_ me. I didn't even know about the dream-house until this week...and now Ben's gone...and he took Nash, why couldn't he have taken Mark? Mark's going to ruin everything."

"Who's—"

"_Mark_ should have gotten sick, not Graham," Trip said, steamrolling. "Or he could have actually helped at the turbine that night, instead of just _saying_ it later. He's useless. And the only people who ever believed me, who ever helped, are gone. I mean, they're coming back, but I need them now, and...damn, the worthless, crappy sensors, and the hydraulics, and Monkey's stupid,_ suicide machine_ of a bike..."

She drew up to a short stop, and laughed bitterly. "Sorry. Sorry, I'm...why am I telling you this? You just got here. You don't _care_."

Jason watched her for a long time, then folded his arms over his chest. "How big is the dream-house here?"

"Oh, yeah, great," Trip said. "Sure, okay. Everyone knows this but me, huh? Everyone?"

"Wel—"

"Yeah, _okay_, I didn't know. Fine. But you know what? It's crazy. It's _crazy_ that they live like that. It's not living."

Jason was silent.

"It's not living," she said again, and put heat in it. "It's not living at all. And that's not why we brought them back. If that's all they wanted, they should have just stayed there! In the stupid desert!"

She caught her breath, raggedy and thick, and held it in until she could calm down. Jason watched, his face unreadable.

"No...sorry," she said, when the indignation subsided. "That's...not true. I wouldn't have left them. It's not right."

"Of course you wouldn't," Jason said, but he said it slowly.

"I wouldn't," Trip said. "I didn't. Monkey and I saved everyone. We brought them home."

She had to remember that, had to hold on to it. It was the only thing that got them across the desert at all.

Trip swore pointlessly at nothing, and pressed her fingers against her eyes.

"You know what?" Jason asked. "They're lucky to have you."

His tone was odd, not quite complimentary, but she was grateful anyway.

The radio jumped again, and Trip snatched it up without looking back at him. "Tower three, over."

"—west-northwest, over?" the radio said, and she turned in that direction.

Trip motioned quickly at Jason, who only hesitated for a second before grabbing the binoculars and handing them to her.

"Negat—" she said, then stopped. Her finger loosened on the radio button. All the strength went out of her spine, and she bowed inward.

Monkey was close enough to see the outline of him, and the sun bright in his hair.

"Come back?" the radio asked, clearer.

"Affirmative," she said. "West-northwest. Confirmed trader, kill alarm. Over."

The radio speaker burbled its way through the reply, but she snapped it back to the tower post without waiting to hear it.

"What is it?" Jason asked.

Trip pressed her knuckles against her mouth until she imagined blood.

"What?" Jason repeated. "Mechs?"

"No, it's nothing." She peered through the binoculars, just to be sure, but she could never not recognize him, even at this distance.

"Can you keep watch for a bit?" she asked, and started retying her shoes before Jason could answer.

"I'm not really familiar..."

Trip pointed at the button relays. "If you see a person, hit that. If you see a mech, hit _that_. If you see nothing, keep watching." She shrugged. "It's a watchtower. You'll figure it out."

"Okay," Jason said doubtfully. "Who is it?"

"You know what?" Trip asked, and felt the only safe places in the world grow distant. "Sometimes I don't know."

* * *

><p>On the way down, she dragged her feet.<p>

For the first time, out of all the days she'd run down to meet Monkey, there was a heartbeat's hesitation in each step, some invisible thread pulling her back toward Liberty instead of to him. Or, better yet, out away to the nothingness, or to the cities she'd never seen, away from everything that was broken and wrong.

The last hundred yards were the slowest, almost a crawl, and she could have sworn he did the same.

She stopped a few yards from him, without really meaning to. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," Monkey said, and sounded world-weary.

He had a pack strapped to his back, filled with odds and ends that Trip could only guess were for his bike.

They waited, as if mutually puzzled by each other's presence, until Monkey set his pack on the ground. "What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing. What?"

He should have had an exasperated reply to that, but Monkey seemed bent under his own weight, and had nothing left to work with.

Trip fought back the small, niggling doubts that flowed back to her from Liberty.

"Ben's gone," she blurted out.

"What? Why?"

It wasn't what she meant to say, but it was as good a start as any. "Graham's sick. Really sick. Ben kept asking Granville for help, but he never heard back. So he went himself."

"He left you here?" Monkey asked. "With all this shit going on?"

"Graham could be dying. And I can take care of myself."

Monkey looked like he had something to say to that, but instead he reached down for the bag. "Fine. Can we finish this back in town?"

"No," Trip said, and he froze, mid-crouch. "You probably shouldn't be seen in Liberty right now."

"What the hell does that mean?"

His anger caught her by surprise, and she snapped back. "I was right. Kids are going missing."

"Yeah, I heard on the porker's radio. What about it?"

There was an ashen quality under his usual tan, and Trip could swear she saw dark circles under his eyes. He'd gained years since she last saw him, and it was so startling that he had to repeat himself before she could answer.

"Mark thinks..." she began.

"Well, that's a fucking red-letter day," Monkey said. "So?"

Trip drew in a deep breath. "He thinks you're the one taking them."

"_What_?"

His surprise was gratifying but not helpful. "And he swears he's going to prove it."

Monkey raked a hand through his hair. "You could have warned me. You could have— Fuck, Trip, why didn't you tell me?"

"What would I have said?"

His anger rippled out toward her, until she could sense it like static on her skin. "You haven't sent a dragonfly in days," Monkey said. "Days. It's never like that with you."

"I've been busy."

"Busy." He tossed the word right back at her.

"Things are...they're a mess here. Everything's falling apart." She fingered her belt loop anxiously, flicking it with pent-up energy. "And I didn't know what to say."

"You didn't know what to say?" Monkey repeated, incredulous. "You never _stop_ talking!"

That stung, and Trip reared back slightly before rolling forward onto her toes. "Where do you go at night?"

Monkey gave her a guarded look. "What?"

"When you're here," Trip said. "When you're here, you don't stay in that house. You aren't anywhere. Where do you go?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

She held her hands out, searching. "Just tell me!"

Monkey scratched the back of his neck. "Trip... You aren't in my head anymore, okay? I can't hear you when you need me. And now you spring this on me?"

"It's not a hard question," she said. "You're stalling...why can't you just tell me?"

Monkey reached down for his bag. "I don't go anywhere."

"You're lying," Trip said, and he looked at her so sharply that it hurt.

"I don't _go_ anywhere," he said again, carefully. "I might not stay in the house, and I might walk, but I don't go anywhere special."

"Why?" It was a plea then, and Trip shook back tears. "Just tell me. Is it the slaver band thing?"

His face did something she hadn't seen before, like he was thinking up something she wanted to hear, like he'd never in his life learned how to lie, but was trying now.

"Trip," he said, intentionally slow, like he was talking down a scared animal. "Dragonfl—"

"_Don't call me that_!"

The nickname had always been warm, but he was using it for a reason, trying to silence her, and it felt cheap in her ears.

Hurt flashed in his face, for just a moment, but it closed off again just as quickly. "Fine," he said. "If that's the kind of crap you're pulling today, I'm going back."

He dumped the pack back on the ground. "Get those to whoever's working on the bike, if anyone's bothering to."

"Fine," she said. "I'll take care of it."

It was harder to look away than it should have been, and Monkey spent long seconds meeting her angry, bewildered gaze before turning away.

Then he paused, mid-step. "Trip..."

"What?"

"You said Mark was going to prove I'm taking those kids. How?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in days. He's just sending out dragonflies."

"God damn that kid," Monkey said, with vehemence that rattled her. "I should have wrung his neck every time he looked at you like..." He caught the thought and stomped on it. "Trip, listen. There's something you should—"

She cut him off. "If you won't tell me where you go, or where you've been, or how I can help you, I don't want to hear it."

"What _do_ you want to hear?"

He watched her, his eyes dark, and she finally asked. "What's your name?"

And Monkey, her Monkey, looked at her like he'd never seen her before in his life.

"Okay, then," she said quietly, and had to turn away.

She half expected him to come after her, to grab her by the shoulder and spin her to him, to make sure she knew everything was okay. But she made it two dozen steps before bringing herself to look back.

By the time she did, Monkey had gone just as far as she had, headed in the opposite direction.

* * *

><p>"Are you all right?" Jason asked, when she got back to the tower.<p>

Trip waved him off wordlessly.

She made a brief, near-unintelligible radio call to the next tower, to get someone out there to retrieve the bag of parts, and slammed the radio back down.

"Really, are you all right?" Jason asked again.

"I'm fine," she said. The tears had dried on her way back up, but the salt still prickled on her skin, and she just wanted the day to be over. "Shift's done, anyway."

The next guard hadn't arrived yet, but Jason didn't argue, and he silently folded up his seat and followed her back down the tower.

They passed Neil's lab, which she didn't bother to point out. They passed Monkey's house, and Trip nearly walked into the next gate, trying not to look at it. They passed Mark's house, too, but Trip's only concern was how hard she could get away with punching him if he happened to come out at that moment. It was all his fault, somehow.

It was only a few minutes back to the square, taking the shortest possible route, and with Trip a newly silent and utterly worthless tour guide. They came up the hill to the main area, just before the fountains, and Trip tried to remember what acting normal looked like.

"Where are you staying?" she finally asked.

"I'm not sure yet," Jason said. "The clinic, I guess. For now."

"Hm," she said, already miles away.

They heard the uneven, meshed voices as they came around the last corner and into the open area. Trip would have walked right on past, but Jason muttered something to get her attention, and they stopped.

There were a dozen or so of them, surrounding someone or something near the fountain. Trip was too far to see their faces.

"—were promised!" one of them said, louder than he probably meant to, and the group murmured encouragingly around him.

"Promised?" the man in the center asked, and Trip recognized Neil's voice. "What you were _promised_?"

Trip moved closer, and noted without surprise that the group was a small cluster of enslaved. They had Neil backed up against the wall, and more and more bystanders gathered to watch.

"You weren't _promised_ anything!" Neil said, and it was amazing he could sneer that loud. "Look at you! A few days off the stuff won't kill you!"

"You don't understand," someone said.

"You don't under_stand_," Neil sang back at him. "Bullshit. You're addicts."

Neil snarled at the entire group, even though he would have been outmatched by any one of them.

"Crap," Trip murmured. "Crap, crap, _crap_, Neil. Why now?"

"Freelifer," a woman grumbled behind her, and Trip wheeled around in surprise. They had an audience now, largely enslaved, watching the scene with vested interest. Trip swallowed nervously.

Jason watched, his eyes thoughtful.

"Help me break this up?" Trip asked.

He was a few second late in nodding, but he did.

"You have no right!" one of the enslaved shouted, and took a half-sleepwalking step toward Neil.

"Freelifer! — Bigot!"

Neil, backed flat against the wall now, thin and pale and half-realized as always, found some inner strength and lunged for one of them. "Vegetable!" he roared, in a voice none of them had reason to think he had. "Walking corpse! Brain-dead, useless, shuffling zombies!"

He stepped too close, even Trip saw that, and she sensed the punch coming before the nearest enslaved realized he planned to do it.

Neil took the brunt of it full in the face, and pandemonium broke out as he slammed back against the wall.

The crowd surged in and knocked Trip down, nearly trampling her across the square. Jason helped her up, quickly, and guided her out of the way before jumping into the fray.

Neil's coat was a flash of gray as he went under the pile. A number of residents tried to pull them off him, only to get called freelifers themselves and have fists swung their way, with fewer failures than Trip would have liked. Most of the enslaved merely stood in dumbfounded silence, but Trip saw smiles in some places. She began to push her way through, but lost two steps for every one she gained.

"Hey!" Jason's voice rang out over the din, and she could hear him grunt in pain as someone's elbow caught him in the side. "_Watch _it!"

He veered off to the side, away from the worst of the fighting, and began to scale the broadcast pole. Trip thought he'd lost his mind, until she realized he'd grabbed someone's databand and was already plugging it into the input.

Trip clapped her hands over her ears. A few around her did the same, but only because they saw her do it.

The noise from the feedback was tremendous, like a low-flying plane that refused to pass. The pitch started low and rocketed up until the stones under their feet sang, and the entire square of people staggered back from each other, hands pressed hard against the sides of their heads.

Trip counted to fifteen before Jason disconnected the feed, and her ears rang long after that. She stood, surprised to find that she'd been kneeling, and the crowd around her gazed around warily.

"Enough?" Jason demanded, loud in the newly silent square, and they all looked up at him. "Go home!" he said. When they continued to stare, he sighed. "Please. Go home."

They did, then. The majority, who hadn't seen a scrap of action, muttered to themselves and prodded their ear canals with fingertips, testing for damage. They broke up quickly, and dissolved down the streets.

Trip was able to get across without being knocked around now, but she still had to deal with the pile of stunned assailants near the fountain.

"Up!" she said, scolding them. "Come on, let's go. You made your point."

They looked up without seeing her, just registering the disapproval in her voice, and reacted like misbehaving dogs. They stumbled up, or sideways, or fell back on each other, but eventually got pointed in the proper direction and headed off.

At the bottom of the pile, Neil was curled up, his arms locked around his head to ward off further blows. His face was flushed and puffy already, and his bottom lip was split. But he was alive, and he moaned piteously as Trip tried to get him to his feet.

"You _asshole_," Trip said. "What was that for?"

Jason strode over, with something that looked suspiciously like pride on his face.

"Are you done?" Trip asked him. "Help me get Neil to the clinic."

"Why?"

Trip looked at him. "_Why_? Because he's hurt, that's why."

She managed to get Neil up, with his arm over his shoulder. His head lolled forward, and he spat blood at the stonework. "Fucking...goddamn it," he mumbled. "Shit."

"You earned that pounding," Trip told him. "I don't even know what— Why can't you just keep your mouth shut?"

Neil tried to lift his arm from her and began to topple.

Trip grabbed at him. "Jason, help me here."

Jason waited another moment before righting Neil and looping his other arm over his shoulder. He grimaced at the blood trails Neil's hand left over his shirt, and started to pull them toward the clinic.

"Trip," Jason said, and she looked up from disentangling Neil's numb legs.

"I know he's a jerk," she said. "But we have to get him to the clinic. We can't just leave him here."

"Yeah, I know." Jason peered around Neil's bloody, swollen face at her. "But you want to tell me what else is going on in this town?"


	11. Heartbeat

For MiniAcorn, for trading music with me and inadvertently running load tests on YouTube in the process.

* * *

><p>Interval: Rachel<p>

* * *

><p>Rachel changed her mind about the city after they got to Granville. Not because it wasn't a good place for her mother, who couldn't seem to focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time before retreating back into her head. And not because the city itself wasn't exactly what they'd heard, over the radios and from the caravans who'd passed them on their way there.<p>

She changed her mind because once she decided to leave, to find the place they'd lost Piper along the road and bring her back, even if it only meant bringing back her body, not a single person in the entire, stupid city was willing to help her.

Granville was big and loud with machinery and people, more than Rachel had ever seen in her entire life, much less all at the same time. The engines roared from sundown to sunup, and the air was filled with a buzz of electrical activity that felt like mosquitoes darting around her ears. They said she'd get used to it, but she never quite did.

The only truly good thing about Granville was the kids her age. They came from everywhere, and there were plenty to choose from. Some of them were born and raised Granvillers, some arrived just after Pyramid went down. Others, like Rachel, trickled in slowly, though those were getting less and less common.

Toby was the one who helped her fix Piper's damaged music player, and showed Rachel how to replace the battery so it would run for more than a few hours at a time. The kids traded music for cigarettes or alcohol or bits of tech, or for favors. Rachel didn't have much to trade with yet, and the only thing she seemed consistently good at was pissing off Granville's military-like security, so she relied on Toby to fork over something on her behalf.

She spent every day with an earbud buried in each ear, and the mix of music that was now Piper's and her own squarely between herself and everything else. She might have been able to live there, maybe finally gotten used to it, if it hadn't been for the grave markers.

They had them pre-cut, bits of marble and rock made unnaturally uniform and set carefully in the ground a ways from the main city, where Granville buried their dead. It wouldn't have bothered her—they had to put bodies somewhere, after all—if they hadn't made one for Piper, too.

There was nothing in the grave. Just a pretty, off-white block of stone over an undisturbed patch of ground. Her mother had knelt there for a while, whispering things to her lost daughter, but even she must have seen the pointlessness of that, because she stopped after a week. Rachel never went, because Piper wasn't there. Piper was dead, or wandering, lost and scared and hungry, along the road miles back, and putting a pretty hunk of stone in the dirt wouldn't fix any of that.

After a week of dreaming of Piper walking on bloodied feet, terrified and alone, Rachel tried to get back out on the road. She had her bag packed with what she could scavenge from home or steal outright. She had Piper's tech charged to full, fit to burst with whatever music Toby had for her, and made it as far as the main gate before it even occurred to her that they might not let her go.

And they didn't. They were gentle at first, insisting that she was too young or some other crap. They didn't seem impressed when she told them she'd been as good as alone before, and knew how to avoid mechs and slavers better than anyone. They didn't even budge when she asked if she'd be able to leave if she found someone to escort her, not that she knew if she could.

In the end, they told her to get lost, and she had to be dragged, her heels biting into the dirt like backhoes, one hand gesturing rudely back at the guards and narrowly missing Toby's left eye as he doggedly pulled her to safety.

She tried dozens of times after that, but got no closer to the outside than she had that day at the front gate.

So she waited. She tested every inch of the metal shells around the perimeter of the city, looking for places she might still be skinny and shapeless enough to fit through. She asked the other kids, though most of them stared at her in bewilderment. Granville was way better than any stupid old wasteland, they told her as much, and her sister was as good as dead and probably half-digested in wild dogs. She had Ian in a headlock before he could say anything else after that, and almost tore his ear from his head before the others pulled her off him.

Toby helped, as much as he had guts for. But more often, she was left to her own devices, and she used the freedom to climb the paint-stained metal towers that corkscrewed over the city, and made nice with the younger guards in the watchtowers, to prod them for possible exploitation. She made a circuit around the city every day, pretending to be social, when she was really prowling for a way out, a chink they'd forgotten to tighten.

Piper, or Piper's body, was out there somewhere, far from the grave they made up for her.

So every day, Rachel shoved the earbuds into her ears to get closer to the century-old noise of guitars and raging, aching lyrics that still sounded like they could be hers, and tested the city for weaknesses.

* * *

><p>Eleven: Heartbeat<p>

* * *

><p>Graham was a sunken, bare-bones version of himself, less little boy and more ghost already. Trip sat with him, because she had wanted to, and to give Marla the chance to see to her idiot grandson.<p>

Neil had two broken fingers, both eyes blackened, a cracked rib or three, and a split lip. He hadn't spoken a word of any of it, not when they set him on the infirmary bed, and not when they finally found someone in Liberty willing to look after his injuries, since Rose had no reason to want to. He had curled up on the bed in equal parts righteous indignation and pain, and ignored them completely until they finally retreated.

The fight was all the town was talking about, and no matter who she spoke with, or what worries she tried to ease, Trip felt it all slipping away from her, like gripping something hard between her fingers and losing it anyway.

Thankfully, Jason was everywhere, they said, soothing people where he could, visiting the dream-house and spending hours there, but not sleeping. He tended to the wounds Trip couldn't, wounds she hadn't known were there.

She had told Jason everything about Liberty. About the damaged turbine, and the sensors screaming nonsense after being reset, and the hydraulics breaking. She told him about the dream-house and, rather sheepishly, their rather clumsy way of finding out about it. She told him again about trying to get help for Graham, and Ben's eventual desperation. She told him about the dog they found, out at Rider, and Neil's research into it.

She told him a bit about Monkey, just enough so he'd understand that Monkey was innocent, and could be trusted implicitly, but it rang hollow, even to her, and she had no idea how well she made that point.

Now, in the cool quiet of Ben's house, Trip smoothed back a bit of Graham's hair, sweat-soaked and limp against his forehead, and wondered how much left there could possibly be for the fever to burn away.

"Hey, little guy," she said, and tried hard to imagine Graham stirring. "Graham, sweetie. Sweetheart."

Ben's son, half-dead and so unlike himself, was just a limp thing in the bed now.

Trip took his hot, damp hand in hers. "Graham? You want to hear a story?"

Graham didn't object, and she took that as assent.

Trip could divide her life into two pieces. The divide wasn't when Pyramid attacked her village, like she expected. That whole part of her life before that day was foreign, a kind of waking dream that she forgot as soon as she looked at it too hard. It was a safe, private thing that was closed off from her when she and Monkey found her father in the war room. Or maybe the last of it finally left when Ben did, since he shared it.

"After Pyramid died," she started, and winced as Graham choked briefly on nothing and settled again.

She pressed his hand to her cheek. "After Pyramid, right after, there were a lot of people. They'd been living there, plugged into that system like they were part of it. I didn't see them. I only saw him."

The people were in pits, after all, on either side of the raised walkway to the old man. He sat high over them and more wired than the rest, and he saw them. But she didn't.

"He did it all," she said. "He...came after us, for as long as we could remember. My whole life, Pyramid's sent mechs on raids for slaves. We never knew why. They were just programmed that way."

Graham must have been here, in the village, when Pyramid attacked. He ran with Ben, with the others, back into the sudden safety of the wilderness, while her father stayed.

"And after..."

And after, when she killed the old man, Monkey had reared back, like someone had struck him, like he'd stepped on a live current. The rest must have done it, too, but she didn't see them. She saw her father, abandoned in the war room, and imagined him dying, over and over.

And the voices rose out of the pits, scattered among the slaves, and the sound of it hit her like a wall of water.

Monkey had held her then, pressed her against him until she could only smell the warmth on his skin, and not the oil and coolants that came pouring out of the pitiful man-machine. Monkey wrapped her up against the noise of the enslaved, lowing like cattle or screaming, some just screaming.

Graham snored faintly, and Trip wiped her damp cheeks with a palm. "After we killed him, we had all these people to look after. I thought—you know, we couldn't leave them. What would they do? So we took the slaver bands off of everyone. But..."

Some of them didn't want to take the bands off. Trip attributed it to shock, some sort of reflexive, post-traumatic need for something familiar. But she'd talked them down and gently disabled the bands and eased them over raw skin. It took hours, getting to all of them, even with Monkey's help.

She set Graham's arm back at his side, and smoothed down his covers. He was numb to it, even as she straightened his nightshirt at his collar and sleeves, like she was tucking him in for the night.

"Do you think..." she said, but she was asking herself, because Graham wasn't really with her, and he wouldn't have the answer even if he were.

"Do you think they hated me for it?"

It was the question she wanted to ask Monkey, but Monkey might not answer her now, if he ever planned to.

She sat up straight, swiftly enough to startle Graham, even fevered, into mumbling softly.

Monkey might leave. She didn't know how far she could push him, yet, and maybe asking for his name one more time had been enough. Maybe that coldness had been it, the silent way he slammed a door on her, and it couldn't be repaired.

"Graham," she said, and poured the weight of all of it onto this sick little boy. "Sweetheart, where's your dad? I don't know what to do. I don't..."

She very nearly cried then, a stupid, throttled noise in the back of her throat that was totally undignified. But she had some strength left, just enough to straighten and wipe her eyes. "Sorry, sweetie. That wasn't a very good story, was it? Let me go find Marla, okay?"

She bent over and kissed Graham's scorching forehead, trying not to let it scare her all over again, and started to gather her things.

"Don't worry," she said. "Concentrate on getting better, okay? I'm going to take care of everything."

But even Graham, locked in a fever-dream, could probably hear the lie in that.

* * *

><p>Monkey expected his thoughts to be in some kind of order after trudging across the wasteland all over again, his feet and back aching like there was no padding left in them, but he was just as wordlessly, aimlessly furious as he'd been when he had to turn and leave Liberty without actually reaching it. The anger was mostly for himself, but Trip hadn't done much to help, and he reserved a small part for her, too.<p>

He kept forgetting how much younger she was, like it would stop being true at some point. There were an easy number of years between them, and even after all she'd seen, Trip still had that newly-made feel to her, which meant bright eyes and open hands, and simple answers for everything. Monkey outgrew it years ago, or maybe he'd never had it. He couldn't remember.

His water canister had been in the bag of bike parts, and Monkey's tongue was wad of spiked cotton by the time he reached the canyon. Monkey drank nearly half a gallon of water as soon as he got home, until his throat was a different kind of sore and his head started to swim.

He only let himself rest for a few minutes before starting up again, like an old engine that splutters and complains but never quite dies. He washed his hands, careful to pick any remaining dirt from his fingernails and wondering if callouses could reach bone, and went out to the shed to take care of the boy, as best he could.

There weren't many options, so he dug a pit as deep as he could in the rock-filled dirt on the south side of the canyon ridge. He hoped it was enough to keep wild things at bay, and to keep the wind from opening the grave to the sky after a week. It took him hours, and sweat poured off his back like rainfall.

Monkey picked up the boy, still wrapped in the sheet. He was stiff and rubbery all at once, in that space between recent death and the time when he'd go limp again, and Monkey just wanted to get him in the ground.

He lowered him down as gently as he could, and grabbed the handle of the shovel. He bit the point of it into the earth to start tipping it back into the grave, and stopped.

The sheet had come loose along the way, just enough for the boy's hand to flop free and lie in the open dirt like a dead bird, the fingers white and splayed upward.

Monkey was suddenly glad that it was just him, after all, and Trip was miles away where she didn't have to see this.

He swallowed hard, and turned his head away as that first shovelful of dirt hit the boy's chest.

When the grave was full, he plunged the tip of the shovel into the earth and stood back, sure he was supposed to do something, but couldn't for the life of him decide what. He had no sermons or goodbyes, or even the kid's name. But silence seemed wrong, too. He scowled at the new grave for a long minute before anything came to mind.

"Better luck up there, kid," Monkey said. "I'm sure you can see your mom from there, so look for her."

He rubbed the back of his neck with a rough hand, and had to wipe it on his pants when it came away damp with sweat.

"So, I don't know how to do this right, but I think they'll sort it out up there, okay? You...well, you let me know if they don't."

For some crazy reason, he added, "And I'll find the bastard who did this to you."

Because it wasn't raiders, and the boy didn't get separated from a caravan. There was a reason he was dumped on Monkey's front porch with a needle stab in his arm and mere hours from death. Why it was suddenly Monkey's problem to make it right was beyond him, but it was a good excuse to get moving. Things here had started to take on that sour, unwelcome feeling Monkey usually recognized far before this point, and he had waited too long to move on.

He slung the shovel over his shoulder and turned away, because he couldn't think of anything else to do, and headed to his shack to start thinking about what to take and what he could leave behind.

* * *

><p>There were more people than usual in the streets on Trip's way back across town, talking in high animation and gesturing, some throwing imaginary punches, and she felt their eyes slip to her and back off again. She didn't start the fight, and she only almost helped stop it, and that didn't count for much.<p>

They said Neil's name, or other, less kind things, with considerable venom, and didn't bother to quiet as she passed. Their outrage was palpable, an oily texture in the air that Trip breathed as she walked. She could feel the trouble with the enslaved bubbling to the surface, like an underground river wearing away at the ground beneath them.

Trip saw a few non-enslaved in the market, pantomiming their reaction to the feedback, their hands over their ears. She realized that they were grinning, almost laughing, at Jason's heroics. Jason's solution had been swift and smart, if a little inelegant, and it warranted retelling.

She heard his name in the streets, more than once. Jason did this, Jason said that, as if they'd forgotten he'd only just arrived, and half-dead at that. She was oddly proud of him, having accomplished so much so quickly, but she made a point of remembering Ben on purpose, to keep him close by.

When she got to the clinic, he and Geoff were standing outside, their heads bent over something Geoff was holding. It looked like a piece of Monkey's bike, as best Trip could tell.

"So, yeah, I had to rebuild the exhaust pipe here..." Geoff turned the nondescript thing in his hands.

Jason murmured appreciatively. "That's actually really good. Where did you learn to do this?"

Geoff tried to look confident and humble, but the smile tugged too hard at his mouth, and he had to duck his head. "Just...repair books Ben had. It's not that big a deal."

"Repairing something means using your head a lot," Jason said. "You have to see a problem a dozen different ways to figure out how to fix it."

"Yeah, that's what I keep trying to explain to Wren."

They looked up, a little late, when Trip approached.

"Hey," Geoff said, and went back to fiddling with the bike part.

Jason left him to it and came up to Trip. "Hello. How's...um..."

"Graham?" Trip asked. Jason just couldn't seem to hold that name in his head. "No worse, but no better. I'm sending Marla back to him, if she's ready."

"Are you going in to see him, then?"

Trip hadn't seen Neil since they first carried him in, and he dismissed them like they'd been the disappointment that day, instead of him. "Yeah, I think so."

"You mind if I go with you?"

Trip shrugged. "Sure. Why didn't you go in before?"

"I've been talking to the enslaved, around town," he said. "They...well, they said he'd never had an outburst like that, but he'd always hated the them."

"Yeah, I guess he has."

Jason prodded his scars with a finger. "I don't know that he'd want to hear a lecture from me, then."

Trip had to see the logic in that. "Okay. I'll do the lecturing. Geoff—"

But Geoff was already headed back to the garage entrance, his mind back in the workings of the bike.

"He got that bag of parts that your friend dropped off," Jason said. "It's been hard to drag him out."

Trip couldn't think about Monkey now. There was too much to even try, so she nodded at Jason and pushed Monkey off, clean out of her memory until she had the strength to deal with it.

The clinic was near-still and silent, save for the brief interruption of Geoff opening the garage door on the other side of the building and disappearing into the work area. Marla sat at Neil's bedside, slightly different than she'd been at Graham's, her back bent ever so slightly forward. It was no longer a nurse's vigil, but something dearer, more personal, and Trip had to remember that Neil was her only family, or at least the only family Trip knew about.

Marla turned to them as they entered, and Trip swore all over again that this place made people older, just by sitting in it for too long. Marla was in no condition to care for Neil's cuts and bruises, much less Graham's illness. "Oh, Marla," she said softly. "You should go home."

Marla waved her off, but the motion was languid.

"No, please," Trip said. "You look terrible."

Marla smiled at her. "I'm quite able to care fo—"

"Go away, Gran," Neil said, his back still to them. "I'm fine."

"You're badly hurt," she said.

"Yeah, well, what good will you be if you drop dead?"

"Neil!" Trip scolded, but Marla shushed her.

Marla stood, unsurprisingly unsteady, and Jason eased her away from the visitor's chair. "Home with you, I think."

Neil flopped over and gave Jason a scrutinizing look. "Who are you?"

"He saved you yesterday, dear," Marla said, and let Jason support her arm. "He distracted them with that noise trick."

"The feedback was you?" Neil asked, and Jason's nod was a short jerk of his head.

"There were a dozen of them on you, you know that?" Trip asked. "Jason had to climb the broadcast pole and loop in an auditory feed. If he hadn't, you'd be dead."

"I was fine," Neil grumbled, and Jason snorted on unkind laughter.

Neil winced and tried to lever himself up, but only managed a few inches. "Where did you learn how to override the broadcast system like that?"

Jason shrugged. "I don't know."

"Well, where are you from?"

Trip just barely caught Neil as he tried to stand, and helped him sink back to the infirmary bed, tears bright in his eyes. "Fuck, Trip."

"What did I do? Stay put and it won't hurt so much."

Neil ground his teeth and turned his head away until the pain subsided.

"He's refusing painkillers," Marla said, for their benefit.

"Painkillers are drugs. I'm not a stupid—"

Trip tightened her grip on his shoulder in warning. "Don't you dare. Don't you even say it."

"Where are _you_ from?" Jason asked harshly. "Granville? Where?"

"What do you care?"

Jason pushed his hair back, away from his scars, and even Marla reeled back at the sight of them. "_This_ is why. Where are they still allowing this bigotry crap? Where is it coming from?"

Neil stared at him. "Great. Another vegetable. That's what this town needs. Fuck, where are you all coming from? Is there a factory of you or something?"

"Something like that," Jason said, his eyes hard.

"Neil," Marla said. "Stop."

Neil pushed Trip's hand away. "And I bet you've been to that drug den, huh?" he asked. "Like the rest of them? Soaking their brains with drugs until they aren't even human anymore. The drugs don't fix anything. They're going to ruin everything while we fucking watch."

"The drugs help them dream, and I can't anymore," Jason said. "But you wouldn't understand that." His voice was low and furious, like distant thunder. "You don't know what you're talking about, so shut your goddamn mouth."

Marla cleared her throat around all the language. "That's enough, Neil. He just visited them, that's all."

Neil snorted. "He sympathizes with them, and that's bad enough. It's a disease, and it's going to destroy this town."

"You don't know that," she said gently.

"It's not like we haven't seen it before!" he barked at her, and her mouth tightened.

Jason's eyes sparked, and he worked so hard to bring himself back under control that Trip saw a muscle twitch in his jaw.

"Well, you can never be sure," Marla said, but Neil wouldn't look at her any more.

Trip sighed, pushing out air until her lungs ached. "It's not that bad, Neil."

He wouldn't answer her, either, and steadfastly ignored them all until Jason offered Marla his arm. "I think that's enough for everyone. Can I escort you home?"

She shook her head. "I'm headed to see Graham."

"Any chance I can dissuade you?"

Marla smiled, papery and exhausted. "No, young man. I don't believe so."

"Then I'll make sure you get there," Jason said.

"Thank you," Marla said, and looped her arm through his. "I'd like that."

"Oh, _fuck_ you," Neil hissed at Jason, who didn't so much as glance at him.

Jason led Marla outside, and had the grace not to give Neil the look he deserved before the door closed behind them.

Trip had clutched a handful of Neil's shirt in her hand again, and it was only when Jason was gone that either of them realized it. She released his shoulder hastily, and he brushed at the fabric as if she'd left marks there.

"Why are you such an asshole?" she demanded. "Do you practice at it when we aren't looking?"

But Neil was staring at the door, after Jason and his grandmother, mouthing something silently to himself and puzzling over it. He abruptly sat straight up, poleaxed by something Trip couldn't see. She waited cautiously, in case he made a mad dash for the door, but he only watched it with darkened eyes, one of them red-caked from a broken blood vessel. He tipped backward, like a ship nosing into lower water, and his skin went even whiter than usual.

Trip was getting tired of catching people all the time, but at least it was teaching her what to look for. Neil's eyes twitched upward, and his back buckled, and Trip tried to help him make a softer landing.

He didn't pass out, but he did sink in on himself, all the rage and fight going out of him in one breath.

"Okay now?" Trip asked. "You okay?"

He turned to her slowly. He looked as bad as the worst of the drugged enslaved, his features at a half-tilt on his face. "Trip," he said, and she was shocked to hear his voice that tired so suddenly. "Who is he?"

"I don't know. I mean, his name's Jason. He arrived the day after Ben left, remember?"

Neil stared at her. "But where's he from?"

"Webster, I think? Somewhere. He said they drove him out for being enslaved. Why?"

He didn't answer.

"Just forget it. You did enough damage, okay? Everyone's going to hate you now."

Neil gestured to the corner. "You think?"

There wasn't any glass left in the window to shatter, but someone had made a go of it anyway, and the brick they'd thrown lay pointless and abandoned against the tiled floor. Trip hissed. "When was that?"

"This morning," Neil said dully.

"Any idea who?"

"I forgot my x-ray goggles back at the lab."

"Quit being so...you," Trip said. "_Please_. I'm trying to help you, you know that?"

Neil looked at her through slitted eyes. "No, you aren't."

"I am _trying_," Trip said, but she knew she didn't quite get what he meant, and she was too exhausted to ask.

It was strange, sitting with Neil and not doing anything, but she didn't want to leave him, not after seeing what they'd already done. So she listened to the hum of Ben's machinery, in Ben's clinic, and the distant noises of Geoff tinkering in the garage. She realized she couldn't say for sure how long Ben had been gone, or how much longer it might be for him to come back. And she needed him here, maybe more than she could remember needing anything.

Other than Monkey.

"I was with Graham this morning," she said at last. "I don't think he's going to make it."

She wasn't sure what expression passed over Neil's face. "Yeah," he said quietly.

"'_Yeah_'?" she repeated. "That's it?"

"I already told Ben I couldn't help."

She moved to touch him, but Neil jerked his shoulder away, and it cost him another wave of agony.

"Please," she said. "Graham's going to die. Don't you even care?"

"It doesn't have anything to do with me!" Neil said sharply. "I don't know anything about it, and I can't help."

Trip backed away. "You would have made a shitty doctor, you know that?"

"Good," Neil said. "Why don't you ask your new hero to give it a try?"

He meant Jason, and Trip scowled at him. "Shut up."

"Fuck," Neil said, not even at her anymore. "Fuck this whole town. You can all go to hell."

Trip felt the rage well up in her like a storm, like something raw and welcome inside her. "Same to _you_," she snarled. "We didn't have to take you in, you know. You showed up at the gates like any enslaved, and we took you in. You eat our food and sleep in our beds and Marla earns her keep and is lovely and wonderful and I don't know what the hell you're good for."

Neil's gazed darted to her. "It was a mistake for everyone, then."

Trip had never kicked anyone out of town before, and she didn't want to start now, but he wasn't making it easy. "Maybe," she said instead.

He dismissed her without words, by sitting up again and starting to peel the bloodstained hospital fabric from his skin. The bruises were hand-sized and swollen over his back, and midnight blue-black in the worst places. He was skinny, even skinner than Trip had thought, and she realized that he was showing her this on purpose.

"You earned those," she said. "You know that."

He turned to her, and his chest was even worse. The broken ribs jutted forward, not enough to break skin but worryingly close to it. His right collarbone was concave where it shouldn't be, and blood swam just under the skin.

"Jesus," Trip said.

"Get out," Neil told her. "You think you're helping? You're not. Solve your own problems."

"Like what?" Trip asked, but she couldn't stop imaging things moving under his skin, like bones and muscle still rearranging. "I'm doing everything I can."

He gave her a long, narrow glare. "Just get out."

Trip did, but she saw the bruising on his skin long after she left, long after she blinked up at the sun-bleached sky, like dark spots burned in her vision.

* * *

><p>She couldn't find Jason for a while, but she stumbled across all the place he'd been. Everywhere she went, she met people who had seen him that day, though not recently. Trip spent an hour looking, because she wanted to ask something she hadn't yet, that had been the first question in her mind since they cleaned the dirt from his skin, and she hadn't been brave enough until now.<p>

She stopped by the dream-house, which was quickly becoming more of a gathering point. The enslaved were awake, many of them, but they huddled in clusters and talked, maybe about the dreams they had before the drugs ran out, maybe not. They gazed at Trip with misgiving until she explained she was looking for Jason, and then their faces lit like switches being hit, all at once. They hadn't seen him, of course, but they'd like to, if she found him.

Finally, she made her way to the watchtower, where they told her Jason had come and gone, but he mentioned he was going to sit with Graham for a bit, to give Marla the break she'd refused for so long.

And so Trip went back to Ben's, and found Jason reading at Graham's beside, apparently unaware that he'd been hiding from her.

He glanced up as she came in, and pressed a finger to his lips, as if she stood a chance of disturbing Graham.

"What's up?" he asked, after she pulled a stool up alongside him.

"When did you get your scars?" she asked, without preamble. "Why are they different?"

Jason smiled ruefully, a little slow. "I was wondering when you'd ask. Everyone else has."

"I wasn't sure if you'd answer."

He walked his fingers along the marks the band had made, clear across his forehead to his temples. "It was a long time ago."

"Yeah," Trip said. "You didn't come from Pyramid, did you? Were you on a slaver ship when the system went offline?"

"No, thank goodness," Jason said. "I think some of those crashed. Lost power right in the middle of it, and fell straight down. A lot of the slaves died that way."

Trip tightened her hands on the stool until her bones hummed. "I didn't know that."

"No, I don't think you would have expected it," Jason said, neutrally.

He sighed and massaged his scars with his fingertips. "Anyway, these are older. Years ago. I was probably your age."

"You escaped?" Trip asked, and was surprised she never considered it. "Most people die, if they try."

Jason's hand dropped into his lap. "Well, no. We didn't escape, exactly. We were on a ship, though."

Trip remembered the ship tht had taken her, and the dozens of pods that lined its halls. "What did Pyramid need enslaved for on a ship? Don't the mechs run it?"

"Mostly, yes. It's almost totally automated. Altitude, destination, speed...pretty much everything. But it's not perfect, and landing and taking off usually needed more guidance than that. In the end, everything needed more flexibility than programming."

Trip nodded, fully understanding that.

Jason flexed his fingers. "That day, something went wrong in the ship's programming. The entire system went down, and the ship switched to manual control. We had to land it. We...very nearly didn't."

"You couldn't have used the escape pods?"

Jason shook his head. "Mechs wouldn't let us. We had to save the ship. They were all old, you know, and there weren't as many as there used to be. Orders were to land and repair it."

"And if you didn't..." Trip said, and Jason nodded.

"We managed it, somehow, but it was a rough landing. The people that weren't strapped in..." He paused and shrugged. "As soon as the fires were out, the mechs had us all outside to look at it, which is when we noticed."

Trip barely waited a full second. "Noticed what?"

"The ship and mechs used the same programming," he said slowly. "They communicate. So when the ship went down, it took the mechs, one by one. As well as..." He tapped his scars. "Well, enough to stop the control. The bands themselves didn't open. We had to force them off."

"That's why your marks are so bad."

He must have been remembering that, because he scowled. "Maybe it's why we couldn't dream after that. Maybe we did it wrong. And a lot of them...the people on the ship, couldn't survive with it cut off like that. The ones that didn't die in the landing...they didn't make it without the bands. The ship had two, three dozen people when we took off, but by the end..." His mouth twisted.

Just like Heather, and countless others back at Pyramid. Trip reached out to touch his hand, but didn't. "At least you were free," Trip said.

Jason shrugged, and she felt foolish.

"So what then?" Trip asked. "Where did you go? Where's the ship now? How many of you survived?"

"At the end, it was just us," he said. "And she..."

Trip blinked, startled, but waited for him to continue.

"Just us," he said again. "She said we had to leave them. We walked away from the ship, and left it there."

No sand to leave footprints in, but the same idea, after everything.

They listened to Graham's wet, uneven breathing for a few minutes. Trip fretted at the edge of her chair with her fingertips.

"Where is she now?" she asked. "The woman who escaped with you?"

Jason didn't acknowledge the question at first, and instead went statue-still, his eyes frozen, and Trip knew she only imagined seeing the scars writhing on his skin.

"She's gone now," he said softly, and suddenly left Trip sitting alone, the door drifting shut behind him.

After a few moments, long enough to smooth Graham's hair behind his ear, Trip stood and followed.

* * *

><p>Geoff caught them as they were coming out. He was breathless and just shy of breaking into a sweat. Wren was at his heels, in no better shape.<p>

"Mark's holding an emergency meeting," he said, and gulped in air.

Trip's gut wrenched. Of all the days for Mark to finally surface, it had to be now. "How can— Who does he think he is?"

"Everyone's already there," Geoff said. "We were sent to find you."

"...Okay," Trip said, but Wren made some panicked noise, barely a word at all. "What, Wren?"

"Mark found what he needed," Geoff said angrily. "It's over."

"How can it be _over_? What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, but he shook his head.

"Monkey..." Wren said quietly, and went still again.

Geoff had forgiven her, or at least enough to let her take hold of his arm. "We've been grabbing the dragonflies as soon as they arrived for Mark and made copies of them," he said. "We needed to know what he knew."

Trip stared at him.

"We had to do _something_," Geoff said. "You weren't."

"I was...Wren, we did, didn't we?" she pleaded, stupidly, but Wren would only look at the ground.

Geoff snarled. "Yeah, so the kids were taken by the ravine, not the scrapyard. But they're not going to care about that when they see this."

"What did Mark find?" Trip asked, and the lump in her throat was solid rock.

Wren spoke up, thready and trembling. "Monkey and a boy. The boy died."

"What?" Trip asked, because it was all she could ask. "What?"

She turned to Geoff. "_What_?"

"I don't know," he said, and thrust his hands into his pockets. "You tell me."

* * *

><p>All Trip remembered of it later was that it had been fast, too fast for her to get the words out properly, and she cursed herself endlessly for it.<p>

They let everyone into the meeting who showed so much as a passing interest, and the war room was packed tight. There were too many of them for the small space, but no one seemed to mind being jostled, because everyone had heard that something, they didn't know what yet, was happening, and they didn't want to miss it.

Mark was at the head of the table, with Rose at his side, and the excitement in their faces blossomed as Trip walked in, and her heart sank in response.

"There you are!" Mark said, absurdly grand. "Finally. Let's do this already."

Trip only recognized a few of them, out of the corners of her eyes. Without Ben or Nash, or Neil or Marla or any of them, it was a room of strangers. She had Geoff and Wren, who'd been admitted as an oversight, and Jason, who stood at her side but was more puzzled than worried.

"We got him," Rose announced, to Trip and to the room. "We got the proof we need to prove that he's been taking the children."

"Who?" someone asked, breaking her cadence, and she glared him into silence.

Mark stood taller than Trip had ever seen him, in spite of the dark circles under his eyes and the clear signs that he'd been pursuing this with a madman's intent since the last meeting. He held the datachip aloft, as if they could see the evidence on it in his hand, and smiled in a way that could freeze the waterfall.

"I've been sending out dragonflies," he said clearly, broadcasting it to the crowd. "As often as I could. They were supposed to record the activity along the road, where the children were taken, and bring photos back to me of any life that way."

Trip dug her fingers into her arm at first, but Jason took her hand in his, and she squeezed that instead.

"And," Rose said, "we sent some to the canyon."

Mark plugged the datachip into the console with a flourish, like it was the greatest moment of his life, and the vidscreen flickered. When it solidified, Mark smiled, his teeth pointed and shining. "A few days ago, this is what it recorded."

"_Shit_," Geoff said, although he'd already seen it, and the room erupted into shocked murmuring.

It was Monkey, the shape of him slightly fuzzed at the edges, but still undeniably him, and he had a child in his arms.

Trip felt the floor go unstable under her feet, and Jason was suddenly holding half her weight.

Whether the boy was already dead was debatable, but it didn't seem to matter. The room chattered loudly, some of them horrified, some gleeful with the scandal of it.

Trip knew, with a pain in her chest that was like having the wind knocked from her, that it was her fault for not letting Monkey tell her this when he tried, days ago, and she might have been able to help. He might have had a chance to explain, but there was no hope for it now.

"And there's more," Rose said, nastily, and Trip didn't doubt it.

The other photos were exactly what she expected. Monkey carried the boy inside, and Mark explained that there was a delay of a few hours before he emerged again, this time with a white sheet wrapped around what had to be the boy's body and conveyed him to the shed.

"The dragonfly's battery died after that," Mark said. "But I think it's enough."

"It's _more_ than enough," Rose said, and snarled at any possible defiance. "We're voting now."

"Voting on _what_?"

Rose and Mark glared at the other end of the table, and Trip was shocked to find that it was Geoff, at her side, who had spoken. "That doesn't prove he killed him, or that he abducted him. What are we voting on?"

"You're not voting anyway," Mark said. "And even if you were, you should be thinking about how to keep your sister safe, so shut it."

"Yeah, well, what if they're fake?" Geoff demanded. "It could all be made up. You hate Monkey."

"They look real enough," Jason said quietly.

Geoff glared at him. "Yeah, what do you—" he started, but fell back as Wren yanked his arm hard enough to unbalance him.

Rose stood, and it was a regal, liquid motion that drew attention to her. "We have enough evidence to send to Granville. We'll be doing that no matter the vote, because they'll have the resources to pursue it."

Trip couldn't speak. She tried, but the entire language up and left her, and her mouth felt sandy.

Rose smiled. "So, we'll be taking a vote on how we, as a community, want to respond to this threat."

Mark cleared his throat. "We propose an exile, obviously. Monkey won't be permitted within a hundred yards of Liberty's perimeter."

"Or what?" Jason asked softly, but they all heard him. "What if he does come?"

Mark looked at him with faint surprise. "We'll shoot him, of course."

Trip found her voice then. "Mark! _Please_!"

The snarl faded from his face for just a moment, just enough for Trip to see that he really thought he was doing the best thing for them. And for her too, probably.

Rose cleared her throat and held her hand aloft. "Those in favor of exiling this man—_Monkey_—from Liberty, pending investigation from Granville for abduction and murder?"

Nearly every hand in the room went up, until there was a sea of them, and Trip was drowning on air.

Trip heard Geoff distantly. "Maybe Neil can prove they're fake. Maybe I can. Just give me five minutes with them..."

Everyone ignored him.

"Those against?" Rose asked, quiet and dangerous.

Geoff's hand shot up. So did Wren's. Trip had no idea how to work her limbs at all anymore, but Jason raised his hand, and brought hers along with it.

Rose looked at Jason in dismayed surprise for a moment. She made a show of counting, but it was purely for the entertainment of it.

"That's twenty-two for exile," Rose said, and ticked them off with animalistic fury. "And four against."

"That's it, then," Mark said. "If Monkey comes anywhere near Liberty, he'll be shot on sight. Motion passed."

And Trip felt, from very, very far away, Jason's hands catching her as the wave came down, suffocating and heavy, and she slipped backward.

* * *

><p>As soon as she remembered how to walk, Trip went to find Neil, because she couldn't stand to see anyone else, and he might know how to prove that the photos weren't real. It was suddenly hard to walk that far, from the distance from the war room to the clinic, even though it was as close as it had always been.<p>

Neil wasn't there, which she would have expected if she'd been thinking clearly. Instead, Trip wheeled at the door, her arms drifting around her like a dancer's, and headed back toward his lab.

If anyone dared to meet her eyes, she didn't know, because she couldn't look at anything but the road right under her shoes. She stared at them, thinking about crossing all those miles with Monkey, so close she could always sense him, slaver band or not. She knew how he twitched in his sleep, just slightly, like a dog sighting an animal it wanted to chase but was never able to reach in the dream. She knew how he hated to let her see him in pain, though he always would be at the end of a day's travel, and how he gave her more than enough room when she needed it, and knew when to come close again.

She stared at her shoes, at the paths, at the dirt scuffling underfoot like the sands in the desert, and somehow made it all the way to Neil's lab without crashing into a single gate.

Trip was surprised to find the Neil's door open. She thought he'd have locked it down like a fortress after the fight, with iron bars and tripwires and posted dragonflies. Instead, the door swung open as soon as she put a hand to it, practically on oiled hinges.

The lights were on downstairs, but she didn't hear him moving around, and didn't smell any of the usual chemicals. She fumbled her way down the stairs on wobbly legs, and made sure to dry her eyes before she left the bottom step.

The first thing she noticed was that the door to the rabbit room was open, but Neil was nowhere in sight. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, uncertain, and waited for him to materialize.

"Neil?" she asked, finally. "Where are you?"

She heard a constant, patternless thumping noise, and realized it was the rabbits' small feet thundering in their metal cages. Trip swallowed and moved forward into the lab, surprised that she'd made it this far without being stopped, and almost slipped in a puddle when she rounded the lab table.

Trip didn't scream, somehow. She scrambled back, hands and feet and knees everywhere, just to get away.

Neil was lying face-down on the floor, the back of his head bloody and cracked open to the air.

Trip had slipped on the fresh blood that pooled around his head and spread out like a living thing across the concrete. One of her hands landed in something wet and pulpy, but the hand stopped being part of her at that moment, and she left it glued to the floor.

"Neil?" she asked, around a numb tongue. "You...asshole, this isn't funny. It's..."

There wasn't even a stirring in his chest where his breath ought to show, and Trip knew that she wouldn't see it again, no matter how long she waited.

"Trip?"

She barely heard it. She lifted her first hand to see blood, and her brain stumbled on the brightness of it and stalled completely.

"Trip? You down here?" Geoff's disembodied voice floated down, and a hysterical giggle welled up in her throat.

Geoff pounded down the stairs. "Jason said you'd be here. Come on, we can't let them do that to Monkey. Mark can't just—"

He skidded to a stop when he realized she was kneeling on the floor, one hand in the air in front of her face, like she was counting fingers. "Trip? What happened?"

She lifted the other hand. That one had landed in something gray that squished between her fingers, and she lurched to her feet when she saw it. She pressed her hand, palm out, in Geoff's direction, and pointed dumbly at Neil's body with the other.

Then she threw up.


	12. Liar

Twelve: Liar

* * *

><p>In the end, Trip spent an hour simply rehearsing, then recording and re-recording the short message on the dragonfly's datachip.<p>

The first try had been too rushed, too obviously a jumble of thoughts as they came to her, and the dozens of things she couldn't tell Monkey, assuming he'd accept the dragonfly at all. She put it all out in a long, breathless ramble that encircled Jason's appearance and Neil's death and the vote that left Monkey exiled. Trip recorded it the way she would have, if she'd been talking to Monkey on any other day, but she heard herself in it on playback, heard the way her voice pitched forward and wobbled throughout, like her nerves were strings that quivered louder than her words could drown out. So she erased it, tried again, and erased that, too.

Back at the lab, Geoff had run straight for help. He left Trip alone with the fluorescent lights reflecting off the wet floor and with the sour taste of bile in her mouth, and Neil's body sprawled bent and unnatural at her feet. Geoff returned with the first person he must have found on the street, who in turn went to fetch Jason, because getting Jason seemed to be the most natural thing to do.

When Jason arrived, scant minutes later, Trip was back on the floor at Neil's side, this time searching for a pulse she knew she wouldn't find. She didn't look at the mess Neil's open skull had made all over the floor, or the one she'd made right next to it, when she'd emptied her stomach. She only saw Neil, and the ink-black marks on his face, thinking about the bruises and broken bones hidden under his clothes.

She had her hands on his chest, one fitted over the other, and was trying to pump rhythm back into him when Jason looped his hands under her arms and dragged her away, her hand still fluttering in the air like bird wings.

Marla shouldn't have been there, not until they could get his face covered, but she was suddenly in the doorway, silent and without judgment. She halted them at the door as they went to bear Neil off on the stretcher. Trip watched as she lifted back the sheet and considered her grandson without surprise or grief, and led them up the stairs and away.

After that, Jason escorted Trip home, opening the gates without prompting or needing to be reminded what the codes were. He left her at the front door to her house and offered some kind of neutral promise to come back, but she went inside without hearing it and barely stopped to peel herself out of her blood-soaked clothes before stepping into a shower that was hot enough to scald.

She told the dragonfly all of this, across half a dozen attempted recordings, but deleted each of them at the end.

It wasn't like coming back to the settlement and finding it destroyed by Pyramid. It wasn't like then, when she'd torn up and down the streets to find bodies piled against the walls, huddled in doorways, even half-tipped over the safety rails. That was too big to take in, all at once, and became a single, mindless loss that set the course for everything else. In a way, it was easier, because at least she'd known exactly what to do next.

But Neil, vilified and unlamented, was growing cold wherever Marla had asked them to take his body, until they could find someone willing to bury him, and she had no idea who to blame.

She wiped the datachip again and stared out over the watchtower railing, waiting for the words to assemble properly.

And the photos, of Monkey and that boy, were so real. It looked like Monkey, like the way she'd imagine him carrying a sick child if he had to. It wasn't someone made to look like him, and it wasn't some clever forgery. There was a dead or dying child in Monkey's arms, just like they'd wanted, and word would be on its way to Granville by now.

Trip fiddled with the dragonfly's lens, twisting it back and forth and listening to the dragonfly mechanically guide it back into place each time with growing irritation.

She pressed the record button again, and took a breath that felt like needle stabs in her lungs.

"Monkey, it's me."

The same pause, every time, right there, that spoke volumes she didn't actually mean to tell him. She couldn't mention Neil, or Jason, or anything that might bring Monkey running, firing squad or no.

"Listen," she said, trying to be conversational and unconcerned, and feeling nowhere close. "Mark's got these photos of you carrying a kid. He convinced everyone you've been kidnapping them."

She tilted her head, listening, as the door to the guard house opened and closed.

"I can fix it," she said quickly, "but I need some time. Don't try to come by until I say it's safe, okay? They'll...try to shoot you."

Trip wasn't sure anyone was a good enough shot to actually hit him, but it wasn't worth taking the risk. Or worse, Monkey retaliating and cracking one of the townspeople over the head with his staff. One body was enough.

"So, look—just, stick around the canyon until I can show everyone Mark's an idiot."

She did hear someone climbing the tower then, their hands swift on the rungs, and she bent her head closer to the microphone.

"I'll take care of it, so just stay where you are. I'll send word when it's safe. I just wish..."

Trip wanted to say she was sorry, but she wasn't sure for what, or whether Monkey would even get the dragonfly to hear it.

"Anyway," she said, "I'll let you know. Be safe, okay?"

She snapped the dragonfly's head back into place as whoever it was came up over the ladder and stood behind her, taking up more space than he should have, and Trip felt claustrophobic for the first time.

"What are you telling him?" Mark asked, and she swore she heard triumph rolling through his voice.

"To stay away for now." She didn't turn to look at him. "If he shows up and gets himself killed, it'll be your fault."

"It'd be his own fault," Mark said. "He's the one who was taking the children. Who know what he's done to _them_?"

"It's not true and you know it," Trip said, and held the dragonfly over the edge of the railing.

She almost expected him to move to grab the dragonfly from her, but he didn't do anything as she leaned forward and tossed it high into the air. The dragonfly spun once, straightened its wings into the breeze, and soared away.

"This is unbelievable," Mark said, and she finally turned to face him. "I do it, I actually find evidence that it's been him all along, and you _still_ side with him."

"Of course I still side with him," she said. "He's Monkey."

"That's not even his name."

Trip didn't let him see how hard that one hit. Instead, she slammed the dragonfly case shut and closed up her databand connection. "The worst part is that he's still out there. Whoever's taking the kids, he's still out there, and you've got everyone thinking it's Monkey."

"It _is_ him."

She made an angry gesture at him with both hands. "I'm going to find out how you got those photos," she said. "Even if Monkey did have a kid there, there was a good reason."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," she said icily. "But there's a reason. I'm going to go through every frame of every bit of data you found until I figure out what it is."

Mark was still blocking her from the ladder, and he only moved fractionally when she tried to get past. It brought her a little too close to him, and when he grabbed her arm and forced her to meet his eyes, it was from inches away.

"I'm not giving you the recordings," Mark said, too close. "And even if I did, you wouldn't be able to convince them. It's over, Trip. He's not who you thought he was."

"Monkey is _always_ who I think he is."

Mark's entire face narrowed, his mouth drawn down in a growl. "He won't tell you or anyone anything about where he's from, or what he did before the slaver ship. You can't trust him. You're smarter than this, I know it." He was holding onto her arm, clinging to her as if he'd been sinking, and was desperate to anchor himself to her. "Trip, come on. You have all the evidence you need. You're the only one who doesn't see it."

"Let go of me," she said, calmly. "Now."

He wasn't hurting her, not really, but his fingers were heavy and solid on her arm.

"Trip..."

"I said let go," she said, and moved her free hand toward the zip-line that connected the tower to the landing site. "Let go of me, or I'll pull you over with me and let you fall, like you deserve. Let _go_."

He did then, but slowly, his fingertips sliding over her skin. "Sorry."

For a moment, he looked like himself, before all this, like the Mark who was too scared to do anything but wring his hands and fret while she battled the wind turbine. He cleared this throat. "Damn it, Trip. Why won't you just listen to me? This is crazy—you're not listening to reason."

She knocked the safety off the zip-line and grabbed hold of the grips. It felt strange under her hand, like there was still blood on her skin, even after being scrubbed for the better part of an hour. Even under full-hot water, she hadn't been able to lose the tacky, half-dried feel of blood, and Trip was utterly sure she'd never get it all.

"Oh for— Where are you going now?" Mark asked.

"To find out who killed Neil," she said, and kicked off the watchtower.

* * *

><p>The crowd that had gathered at Neil's lab was long gone. They'd congregated there at first, to see his body carried out and to catcall, from the safety of the back of the crowd where they couldn't see Marla's bent head. But when Neil's body had been taken away, they dispersed to spread news of it, and the streets were loud with buzzing voices.<p>

Trip found the lab locked, but knocking brought footsteps quickly up to the door, and Geoff unlocked it for her.

"Hey," he said. "Was wondering where you were."

"What are you doing here?" Trip asked, as he let her inside.

"Same as you," Geoff said. "Looking for clues."

Trip hadn't realized how little light Neil ever bothered to use in the lab until he wasn't there to run it. She and Geoff flicked on every switch they could find, until the room was blazing with tinted fluorescent light and the steady hum filled their ears.

They'd wiped down the floor, the cabinets, everything, with a strong mixture that stung Trip's eyes and burned in her nose. There wasn't a trace of blood or anything else left, but she could still imagine it in the cracks in the patterned floor, miniscule bits of evidence they hadn't managed to scour away.

"Where's Jason?" she asked.

Geoff shrugged. "At the dream-house. Someone came here asking who'd be making the meds."

"They asked..." Trip looked at the beakers, the dozens of ingredients she had no idea what to do with. "That was what they wanted to know? Already?"

"Well, Ben's gone, Neil's gone..." Geoff scowled at the lab in general. "Yeah, they wanted to know."

Trip could only imagine Rose, fit to catch fire now that there was nothing going to the dream-house, where the dozens of enslaved sat waiting for dreams that wouldn't come. "What are they saying, though? About Neil?"

"They're saying he deserved it, and whoever killed him was just finishing what everyone else started."

Trip could feel the headache building behind her eyes, like heavy water. "Someone killed him, though. We should at least find out who."

"Okay. How?"

She gazed around the lab. There were no obvious weapons, nothing that screamed murder at her.

"Did you tell Monkey?" Geoff asked.

Trip picked up a beaker that had been upset and set it upright again, careful not to touch whatever pooled around it. "I told him about the vote."

"What about Neil?"

Neil's console had locked after hours of inactivity, and she gazed at it, wondering how long it would take to hack, and whether it would help them find out who had been here.

"Trip, what about Neil?"

"No, I didn't tell him about that," she said. "He'd only come running."

"And...oh. He'd get shot."

"Yes," Trip said, and regretted taking the high road and not tossing Mark from the watchtower. "And...I'm not sure he'll listen to the dragonfly at all."

She wasn't sure who she was mad at anymore, herself or Monkey, or whether it mattered.

"What?" Geoff asked. "Why the heck not?"

"Nothing," she said. It hurt, not knowing whether Monkey planned to come back to her or not, and she wasn't about to tell Geoff. "Leave it. Let's get started."

"Okay," Geoff said slowly. "What are we looking for?"

"I don't know. I've never done this before."

They took different sides of the lab. Trip looked for anything at all, something the killer might have dropped or left behind, or some sort of clue Neil might have left. But there was nothing, save the partway-abandoned experiments Neil had been conducting, with foul-smelling chemicals that made Trip's eyes water.

The door to the rabbit room was wide open, and Trip made her way there on her circuit around the room. The rabbits were huddled against the far side of their small metal cages, noses and tails twitching with nervous energy as Trip pushed her fingers through the mesh. The few that were close enough had velvet-soft ears that trembled against her fingertips, and she made little nothing noises to calm them.

"You're going to catch something," Geoff said, from the other side of the lab.

"They're marked pretty clear," Trip said, and pushed Neil's careful, hand-printed note out of the way to scratch the back of the rabbit's head. "Control group, experimental group..."

"Well, who knows."

Trip waited for the rabbit to draw away from her and she couldn't reach it through the bars before stepping away. There were only half a dozen of them, although there must have been more. Most of the cages were empty now, with bits and pieces lying on the floor where Neil must have tried to fashion his own from wire and makeshift parts. Half the rabbits were healthy enough, albeit skinny, but the other half were feverish and half-dazed, and stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. Their illness seemed familiar somehow, though Trip had never seen them before.

"Not airborne," she said, thinking aloud. "It couldn't be. It's an open space."

She picked up the clipboard from one of the cages and skimmed it, but Neil's notations didn't immediately shed light on anything. She could tell which group was infected, and which was healthy, and the sort of readings he'd been taking from each. But it wasn't helpful in figuring out who killed him.

Trip set the data back down and spun in a slow circle; the rabbits watched her distrustfully.

"What's weird..." she said, and Geoff shut Neil's cabinet. "You know, he was in no shape to walk. He could barely stand. He shouldn't have been down here at all."

"So why was he?" Geoff asked.

Neil was practically bedridden, with broken bones and bruises that were more internal than external, and blood that shone in open wounds. But he dragged himself across town like that, knowing that someone would want to single him out, would want to find him and finish what they'd started in the square.

"I don't know. He told me to take care of my own problems instead of his. I think he had a death wish." She ground her teeth. "Damn it, Neil."

"It's not his fault someone killed him."

"He didn't make it easy to like him," she said, and Geoff shrugged.

They both heard the brisk, businesslike knocking, and Geoff went back up the stairs to let Jason in.

"—telling them he fell," Jason said as he came in, "but of course they don't believe it."

He stopped near Trip and put a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, but it came out light and airy, and she stood quickly and let his hand fall from her shoulder. "What took you?"

Jason's eyes roamed over the lab, taking everything in. "Talking with the enslaved."

"Anyone seem like they did it?" Geoff asked.

Jason shrugged. "Anyone would have reason to, after that."

"That doesn't mean _anyone_ did it," Trip said, and waited for him to look at her.

"I guess," he said at last.

"We could take fingerprints," Geoff said. "Test them against everyone else."

"Fingerprints on what?" Trip asked. "Mine are down here. So are yours. So are Marla's and Mark's and Ben's. Anyone who's ever helped down here."

"Well..." he said, and left it.

Jason ran a finger along the line of his nose, over the hitch where it was broken. "I don't know that we'll ever know."

Something had startled the rabbits, and they were up and pounding again, tossing themselves in their narrow cages. Geoff went over to them.

"How are you doing?" Jason asked Trip. "Should you be here?"

"I've seen worse," she said, feeling old, and Jason nodded after a moment.

"Listen," he said. "Everyone's talking about...what's going on here. The dream-house and everything."

"Like what?"

Jason tried to catch her eyes, but she watched Geoff as he knelt near the rabbit cages. "Trip, listen."

"I am."

Jason sighed, and it bothered her, like the town was somehow his problem more than hers. "Things are getting kind of ugly. Rose blames...well, you know she blames Monkey. Most of them do. They wish they'd never left."

"It wasn't real," she said. "It wasn't real at all. They don't know what they're saying."

Jason drew in a breath to say something else, but Geoff stood suddenly, so fast the rabbits went into another fit. "Trip, come here."

She was glad to leave Jason, who seemed ready to lecture her.

The rabbits peered at her with bright eyes as she squeezed herself in with Geoff. "What?"

He had something metal and shining in his hand, and she looked at it without comprehension. "Is that from the rabbit cages?"

"Neil was building them from scrap. These are the locking handles, see?" Geoff reached out and flipped one of the cage locks open and shut. "It's just a simple right-angle handle."

"Okay?"

Geoff tossed it in his hand. "Look at it. Remember the turbine?"

"The turbine..." She did, but barely. "The turbine used to jam."

"Only recently," Geoff said. "And one of Ben's guys found a piece that didn't belong, right?"

"What?"

Geoff pressed it into her lax hand, and she almost dropped it. "It's the same. The piece was wedged in the sail so it would jam."

Trip felt like a vid running in slow-motion. "I don't get it."

"I don't either, but Neil sabotaged the turbine."

"But..." The handle was cold and sharp in her hand, and Trip didn't want any part of it. "Why?"

"Hate," Jason said from behind them, "makes people do strange things. This was the town you rebuilt for the enslaved. It was their sanctuary. Maybe he hated that."

Trip heard Jason, but kept her eyes on Geoff's. "Did he ever say anything like...I don't know, about the turbine at all...?"

Geoff shrugged. "Not in front of me."

"He didn't seem like the kind of person who'd have his fights out in the open," Jason said. "He seemed like he'd be happy with sabotage."

Geoff shot him a look and snatched the piece out of Trip's hand. He shouldered past her back into the lab. "I'll be back later. I want to check something."

"The more you dig, the uglier things are going to be," Jason said. "Leave the dead."

But Geoff's head was already bent over the metal piece, his eyes racing along as they did when he was thinking, and he threw himself back up the stairs.

When the door slammed shut, Jason turned back to Trip. "Look, what I was saying—"

"Yeah, it's ugly," she said. "And it's probably going to get uglier."

"You should leave."

Trip had been mid-way through her response when she realized he wasn't talking about leaving the lab. "What?"

"Listen," he said, and came close enough to make her back away. "They blame you. They blame you and Monkey, and now that the drugs are gone, it's going to get worse. You should leave for a while, stay with Monkey. Let me take care of this. They might listen to me."

"Let you take..." Trip repeated it back at him in disdain. "This is my home. You just _got_ here. I'm the one—_Monkey_ and I went out to Pyramid and saved them."

Jason's gaze flicked to her smooth, scarless forehead. "Yeah, I know."

"You think they'll listen to you instead?"

Jason didn't say anything.

Trip couldn't believe it, and she stabbed the air in front of him with a finger. "I'm not leaving. This is my home. And if things get ugly, I'll just have to be in the middle of it."

"You're going to regret it," he said simply, and it wasn't a threat.

"Maybe," she threw back at him. "But right now, I'm trying to find out who did _this_."

"How?"

That was a good question, so Trip said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm going to talk to Marla. Maybe she knows something."

"You're going to ask her if her dead grandson sabotaged the town's wind turbine?"

Trip didn't look at him as she went past, and she left him looking at the sick rabbits, his mind already elsewhere.

* * *

><p>Deaths had been few and far between before Pyramid. Trip couldn't remember the last time they had to gather at the graveyard, set a ways from the community in a place where the ground was soft enough to break with simple tools and move half a dozen feet of dirt. There was no disease, and few accidents. The children were fearless but surefooted as mountain goats and could clamber up and down the settlement's catwalks without so much as a skinned knee, much less anything worse.<p>

The old grew weak and finally gave in to whatever taxed them, but it was usually quiet and painless, and they held simple ceremonies for them, and Trip thought that was the extent of the deaths she'd seen, before Pyramid.

But there had never been any accidents. And certainly never any murders.

She met the group of Ben's men on her way there, still-dirty shovels and pickaxes over their shoulders.

"Thanks," she said, for no reason at all, and they shrugged her off and kept going.

The graveyard didn't look it, at first glance. There were no enormous statues, or stone carvings. No one had the time or energy for that much work, not before the attack and certainly not after it. But the ground was uneven, scattered with small mounds of earth slowly settling with time. At the head of each, there was a clear, river-smoothed stone. The families chose them, making the trek down to the river and coming back with something beautiful, or veined and unusual, or maybe the biggest stone they could carry.

Neil's grave had nothing, not yet, and might not for a very long time.

Marla was surprisingly composed. Trip didn't expect to find her sobbing over Neil's fresh grave, but she stood quiet as a curious bird at the foot of the shifted earth, her hair curled around her cheeks and only slightly out of place.

"Marla..." Trip said, too softly for her to hear.

They'd made a clean, practical job of putting Neil underground. They didn't have the resources or expertise to keep his body much longer than they already had, not without creating a mess no one wanted to clean up, and Trip was suddenly aware of how inconvenient bodies could be. They'd put him in the ground before he could be even more of a nuisance, with stench and decay instead of rabid hate.

Trip stepped on a few leaves on purpose, and Marla's head tilted up ever so slightly at her. "Hello, dear."

"Marla," Trip said again, and couldn't conjure up a single comforting thing to say. "Oh, Marla. I'm so sorry. I..."

Marla turned away from her, back to Neil's unmarked grave. In a few months, once the grass had reclaimed that patch of earth, it might be impossible to tell from the rest of the area. But Trip knew she'd be able to find it again, even if they moved all the other markers and she had to find her way in the dark, because she'd forever see the outline of where Marla stood, motionless against the moving sky.

"They said they had to bury him quickly," Marla said. "I've seen that, where people hang on too long and then wish they hadn't. I wanted to see him go in still looking like Neil."

Trip swallowed against the weight in her throat. "Marla."

Marla didn't move. The wind fluttered at the edges of her dress, plucking at the hem and flipping it around her calves. There wasn't any birdsong, not after so much activity nearby, and Trip suddenly found all the questions she wanted to ask loud and inappropriate.

"I'm sorry," she said instead. "I...I should have done something."

Marla clasped her hands in front of her and gave Neil's grave a watery smile. "If it didn't happen here, it would have happened in the next town. Or the town after that."

Trip didn't want to come closer, for fear of breaking whatever protective shell kept Marla's calm intact. "Do you know...why Neil hated the enslaved so much?"

Marla pressed her fingers against her mouth. There was a faint tremble in them, but when Trip moved forward to do something, to hug her or whatever else came to mind, Marla snatched her hand back down.

"This is my fault," she said softly.

"Oh, Marla, _no_," Trip said, and a sick feeling settled somewhere deep in her. "No."

But Marla stared straight ahead, not at Neil's grave now, but over it, at the bruised sky.

"How could it have been your fault?" Trip asked. "He hated the enslaved. He made enemies of everyone, from the first day. And we think he..."

Trip bit her tongue.

A few minutes passed, and a breeze lifted up from the ground and sent crackling leaves scrambling over their feet. Trip felt summer ending, that quickly.

"Neil didn't hate the enslaved," Marla said.

"Oh, _Marla_," Trip said softly. "Of course he did."

Trip could understand it, almost. Love meant seeing the best and casting off the little bits of darkness in someone else. It meant clinging to those few good things at the risk of being half-blind for it. It was something a woman could do for her grandson.

But Marla's back was straight, and she tugged at a curl of hair near her temple. "No," she said, her eyes clear. "He didn't."

Trip started to say something about that day in the square, and just how much Neil's hate had cost him in the end, when Marla turned to her.

"I don't suppose he ever told you about Sparrow Creek."

The name didn't mean anything, but most of them didn't. "No."

Marla looked back to the open air, one finger worrying at her hair softly. "We had to leave."

Trip remembered then, piecemeal. "He said once that you left somewhere, but he didn't say why. But he said that everyone called the enslaved..."

Marla didn't supply the word for her, and Trip didn't want to say it, not over Neil's grave.

Eventually, Marla straightened the hem of her dress. "Sparrow Creek was a little smaller than Liberty. Good town. They used the water to power the city, like you do here, but exclusively. We were there since, well, since Neil was a boy."

Trip waited.

"He had friends there," she said. "He—oh, don't look at me like that. He learned everything they put in front of him, and he and the other boys were always causing trouble and all sorts of things. Normal things."

She gazed off. "Good years."

Trip thought she knew, then, because it was suddenly her story, too.

"Pyramid..." Marla frowned, caught herself, and kept going. "Pyramid slaver mechs came. They caught a few and had them in headbands before the alarm sounded and the fight began."

"Did..."

Marla smiled. "We won. It was only a scouting party, and we beat them off. We had a few who were good with mechs, who were able to keep them from sending back the coordinates. So the headbands came off, and life went back to normal for a while."

Back to normal. Trip thought, after bringing them all home, life would go back to normal, but with new faces and voices in place of the ones she'd lost.

"It didn't stay that way, did it?" Trip asked.

"The dreamers..." Marla said slowly. "That's what they called them. The ones who got caught, who were put in headbands, said they heard voices, weeks after. So they started taking drugs to quiet them."

Trip thought of the clinic, broken into over and over until the dream-house secured a steady supply. "What happened?"

Marla's hands were in front of her again, wrapping against each other, tension building in them. "There was never enough, and they suffered. Being awake was like being pulled back into a dream, instead of the other way around. What the headbands were...was more real than this. So they stole what they could, and started threatening the mayor into finding more."

Marla was quiet for a moment. "He was a strict man," she said. "And he refused. The dreamers started the riots, set fire to the mayor's house, took his daughter hostage. Three days of a nightmare. Neil and I wanted no part of it, so we stayed inside." She looked at the grave. "We were scared, so scared, huddled against the door with buckets of water from the lake, in case the fire spread."

Trip wouldn't have been able to imagine it, a year ago. But she could now.

"After three days of that," Marla said, "the dreamers made a mistake. They had the girl, she was just a child, out in the middle of town. They said they'd kill her if the mayor didn't do something to help them."

"It wasn't his fault," Trip said. "He had nothing to do with it."

Marla shot her a sneaking, wise look Trip didn't like. "He was in charge, and he didn't address it. He should have, of course, even if the answer was to send them away. But he left it, and it festered like a wound."

Trip felt her hands flex at her sides.

"So," Marla continued, "they wanted an exchange for the mayor's daughter, for drugs or some sort of aid. It was all they wanted. I don't think they hurt the girl, to be honest. But it didn't matter."

Marla shut her eyes and leaned back. "I remember the sound. The mayor had found a man who was a good shot, terrifyingly good. And when the spokesman for the dreamers, the enslaved, stood up and demanded to speak with him, he had that man shot in the head."

Trip drew in a narrow, spiked breath.

"Every man and woman in that group, people we'd lived with, eaten with, for years—they'd been enslaved for hours, maybe, but it was enough, and the mayor had every last one of them, who'd taken his daughter and started the riots—he had each and every one of them strung up from the trees."

"How many?" Trip whispered.

"Dozens," Marla said evenly. "I don't know. And they started looking for others who might have been caught, to flush out the trouble before it started again. So we ran."

Trip was still processing it all, the horror of the enslaved being rewired by Pyramid, then hanged, probably within sight of the whole town.

"The story spread," Marla said. "From town to town, faster than we could run. The enslaved were dangerous, drug-dependent. They couldn't be trusted. We kept running until we didn't hear the story any more."

"But," Trip said slowly, "you didn't have to run. You and Neil...you didn't have to, right?"

Marla twisted her hand around a finger and pulled it taut. "It changed him," she said. "Neil had a future there, could have been someone. He was going to train under their doctor, when he was old enough. He was so good with science, and with medicine. He was going to _be_ someone."

Trip waited, puzzled.

"But we packed up, over and over, each time the story caught up. It spread like fire. People talk when they're scared. And the dreamers...they scared everyone."

She turned to Trip and pushed her thick, gunmetal-gray hair back. "Neil didn't hate the enslaved—I want you to understand that. He hated the dreamers."

Trip never thought to ask. They never did, when someone arrived at Liberty seeking refuge. And she realized, when Marla pushed her hair away from scars that were years old, scars like Jason's, that no one had known.

"Neil ran so I could run," she said. "Over and over. And we come here..."

"And there's the dream-house," Trip said. "Oh, God. And he _helped_..."

"Because I asked," she said, and let her hair fall back into place, and the scars vanished. "If we regulated it, if we treated them the way they'd asked, back in Sparrow, I thought..."

"But Ben left," Trip said. "And Neil was left alone with it. And..."

"He tried," Marla said. "He did."

Trip tried to fit these new pieces into what had happened, and Neil's death. None of it clicked into place.

"Marla," she said at last, "whoever killed him...everyone thinks it was one of the enslaved, because of what he said in the square. He stopped making the drugs."

"He was their only chance of getting it," Marla said. "They might have hated him. They knew he was playing God, but they wouldn't have killed him for it."

"Not one of the enslaved...the dreamers," Trip said, correcting herself. "It doesn't make _sense_."

Marla lifted her head. "You know, he used the dragonflies a lot to talk to the other communities. He had some friends out there."

Trip knew—he'd reached out to them when they wanted information about the dog. "Yeah, I think he said that."

"He used to tell me about them, up until a few months ago. Then he stopped telling me what they talked about, and he got so angry when I asked."

Marla didn't say anything for a while. The sounds of the city barely reached them here, so far from where the activity was, to give the dead some peace and quiet.

"He changed, the last few months," Marla said. "He was talking with someone, and whoever it was, he changed him. Neil rarely had secrets from me, but there were so many this summer, something must have changed."

"I didn't think Neil listened to anyone but himself," Trip said, and immediately regretted it.

But Marla only smiled. "Yes," she said. "Well, he listened to this one. Maybe he found a kindred spirit. They talked about science, he said."

"Did he tell you who he was?"

"No," she said softly. "He never did."

Marla drew in a breath to steady herself, and for the first time, Trip saw the age in her, the way she'd changed after years of running from the fear that someday, her friends would look at her with terror in their eyes, just for her scars.

"I'm sorry about Neil," Trip said, and heard herself mean it. "He did a lot, but..."

Telling Marla now about the turbine, and who knew what else, seemed cruel now.

"I understand why you'd hate him," Marla said softly. "But I wanted you to understand why I never could. And you can ask, if you want."

"Ask what?"

Marla pressed a fingertip to her scars, under her hair. "Yes, I hear snatches of things. Memories that aren't mine. But they've grown quieter and less needy, and if I ignore them, they seem to forget I'm here."

Trip imagined someone else's memories weighing Marla down, like manacles handing off her bony wrists. She straightened suddenly, riveted. "Marla, do you think—"

"Your young man?" Marla said. "Yes, probably."

Marla must have seen that strike Trip, like a punch to the stomach that robbed her of air, because she moved forward and put a hand on Trip's face, over her scarred cheek. "No," she said. "No, no. You couldn't have known. It's all right."

Monkey had worn the headband, the whole way across the continent, practically from one ocean to the other, and never told her.

"Everyone's like that now," Trip said. "Aren't they? Everyone from Pyramid."

"I don't know," Marla said. "But it wasn't your fault."

She was too kind, just like Ben, just like everyone had been at first, and Trip had no idea how much darkness had followed them back across the desert.

"Could you do me a favor?" Marla asked.

"Anything."

Marla smiled sadly. "Anything. Well, I just want to know who he was talking to. Find out who this person was, and what he convinced my Neil to do."

"I can hack into his console," Trip said. "It might take some time, though. Neil was careful about that."

Marla laughed, her voice rough as sand. "I don't know what he was at the end, but he loved his gran, and who'd begrudge an old lady access to his console when hers was on the fritz?"

Trip blinked.

Marla smiled fondly at Neil, dead and trapped under six feet of clean soil, then turned to Trip. "Well, wouldn't it help if you had his password?"

* * *

><p>On the way back to the lab, she heard footsteps catching up behind her on the last street, and Trip wanted to outrun them.<p>

Geoff pounded up next to her. "The turbines," he said breathlessly.

That was all she needed. "Oh, please no. Tell me nothing's wrong with the turbines."

"What? No, no. The old ones. The handle from the cages would have shut one of them down completely."

Trip tried to wrap her mind around that. "The auto-detect system?"

"I asked around. They said the old turbines had a failsafe that would shut down if there was a block on any of the sails. The couldn't remember who designed them that way, but it should have prevented the turbines form working at all. They didn't make the newer turbine like that. They lost the plans."

"But Neil didn't jam any of the older turbines. He put it on the main one."

Geoff scowled. "He must have. But why? The turbines don't do anything for the enslaved, not like the drugs. If he hated them that much—"

"Someone wanted the turbine sabotaged," Trip said. "Not just for the enslaved. For all of us. The failsafe would have prevented it from running until we could find the jam."

"So what?"

"One turbine, nothing," Trip said. "How many scraps like that did Neil have?"

Geoff thought it over. "Enough to take out our main power source. At least for a while."

"I don't think he meant to destroy the turbine," Trip said. "I think, one after the other..."

"Really?" Geoff said. "Okay, so, one turbine malfunctions, and..."

Trip pulled on her lip. "We wouldn't rush on it, not like we did with a totally destroyed turbine. We'd think we had time to fix it, and when the second went down..."

"But he destroyed it, and the whole town knew, and it was fixed back up as soon as we went to Rider."

"He only had half the information," Trip said. "Or whoever was giving the information to him did. Marla...I think Marla's right. Someone's been talking to Neil over the dragonflies."

"But why would anyone want that? Who cares?"

Trip thought there were a hundred reasons why a city would be attractive if its power and defenses were only temporarily crippled, but didn't say so.

Geoff sighed. "There's something else. The dragonfly you sent to Monkey is back."

Trip could have guessed that from the way he was half-holding his hand behind his back. He brought the dragonfly out to show her. Its battery was near-gone, its red indicator light blinking lethargically. The message light was blinking, too.

"He didn't listen to it," Trip said, and didn't realize she fully expected him to until now. "He really didn't."

"I don't think it found him," Geoff said. "There are no lifesign timestamps. It waited at the canyon for hours, but he wasn't there."

Trip didn't feel the dragonfly in her hand anymore. She saw Monkey's back turning to her, and leaving her to her city, the one he never belonged to. "He's gone, then. He left."

"We still have to warn him. He deserves that, doesn't he? Mark's going to shoot him whether he knows or not he's not supposed to be here."

Trip turned the dragonfly around in her hands. Her message was still on it, telling Monkey to stay away for a few days while she took care of things in town. She handed it back to Geoff. "Have you ever pulled the lifesign data from these?"

"Once, maybe. I guess."

Trip flipped her databand up and started typing. "We'll do it in reverse. I'm pulling up the data it collects when it registers Monkey's proximity and feeding it back as a destination."

"It can't do that, can it?"

Trip didn't stop typing. "We'll find out. Use one of the fresh chargers and send it back out. Do a sweep from Monkey's place out. Pigsy's and Rider and everywhere."

"We should tell him to come here. We need his help."

"The last thing I need is Monkey getting shot on top of everything else," Trip said, and Geoff scowled. "Either do this for me, or find someone who will."

"I'll _do_ it, I just—"

Trip turned. "Marla gave me the password for Neil's console. I'm headed over there." She finished the data upload and popped the datachip out of her band. "Here. Take this, and the dragonfly, and send it out again on a search."

"Yeah," Geoff said. "Sure. Did you want me to find Jason?"

"No," she said, so quickly he looked at her in surprise. "But I do need something else. You said you and Wren were collecting Mark's data to see what he had, right? Do you still have copies of those?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring them to me later. I want all of it."

Geoff clicked the dragonfly's head open and shut a few times. "You think he edited it somehow?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to go through every piece of it, after Neil's."

"Why don't you want Jason to come with you? You think he's involved?"

"I hope not," she said. "That's all we need."

* * *

><p>There was a wealth of information on Neil's console that Trip might have lived her entire life without wanting to see. Every datastore she opened seemed to condemn him further, until it seemed they'd never have him buried deep enough.<p>

The majority of the data was on the rabbits. There were hundreds of careful logs of their condition, day by day, and Trip winced at the precise language of it. Their temperature, amount of water they'd drunk in an attempt to soothe the fever, how many of them had died. She flipped through the logs swiftly, but there were always more.

She found information on the turbines, the older ones that Geoff said were set to auto-detect obstructions. She remembered that from her father or Ben, she couldn't think of who, but the older turbines were based on schematics that had been lost, and the new turbine had to be built from scratch when it went up a few years ago. Neil's information, locked under Marla's password over and over again, didn't have any of that. He wouldn't have known.

"What were you up to, Neil?" she asked, and the room hummed at her.

There was a smattering of information on the perimeter sensors, too, and a neat, ingenious workaround to hiding his access information. Trip knew, if she kept looking, she'd find something about the hydraulics, too. Every piece of information she uncovered seemed more and more determined to point her to thinking that Neil was sabotaging Liberty, just enough to inconvenience them at first, until they were totally defenseless. Jason said it was hatred for the enslaved, but Trip couldn't picture Neil climbing the cliff face to the perimeter sensors, or scaling the turbine, just for that. It was a stupid, roundabout way of being prejudiced.

"So...why?" Trip asked. "Who's giving you all this?"

She brought up the dragonfly log cache and waited for it to pull. She stood for a few seconds, thinking there must have been an enormous amount for it to take this long, then realized that there was nothing to populate the list.

Every correspondence Neil had had since the day he arrived at Liberty had been wiped from the datachip.

Trip searched the console's datastore, in case he thought to hide them somewhere else, maybe from Marla's well-intentioned prying, but there wasn't anything to find. As far as the console knew, Neil had never downloaded a dragonfly message in his life.

She went back to the main system and pulled the system snapshots. They weren't very detailed, but they were enough to tell her that in the minutes after Neil died, an hour or more before she found him, someone had deleted hundreds of files. Or, Trip suspected, an entire messaging directory.

Either Neil deleted those files before the killer found him, or the killer did it after Neil was dead.

Trip looked back over her shoulder at the place where she'd found Neil, face-down on the floor with his skull cracked open and leaking.

It hadn't been an angry mob. Neil had let this person into his lab, and been trusting enough to turn his back to him, if only for a second.

But that was enough.

Feeling sick, Trip snapped his console off again and went back to the rabbits.

The healthy ones had almost gotten used to her, and sniffed cautiously at her fingers as she hooked them over the wiring of the cage. She wanted to free them, to let them hop around Liberty or the wilderness beyond. She might save one to press into Wren's arms, to keep as a pet, to stroke its thick fur when she was scared and wanted to comfort something in turn.

The rabbit nosed at her fingertip, testing it in its mouth, and she pulled away before it could nibble on her. She turned to flip the lights off in the room when something caught her eye, in the corner hidden behind the door when it was open.

Neil built his own rabbit cages out of scrap and bits of metal.

And for those kinds of repairs, he'd need a pair of bolt cutters.

Trip stared at them, like they'd vanish if she tried hard enough, but they were dented and scuffed with long use, and utterly refused to stop being real.

Finally, she left them right there, forgotten in a dark corner with a room full of sick animals.

She wanted to talk to Jason.

* * *

><p>They caught her as she was coming up the stairs. Trip stepped out of the brightness of the lab and into the evening air, and she almost walked right into Carl before she saw him.<p>

She stumbled back into the door. "Carl! You _scared_ me."

He gazed at her without expression. There were half a dozen behind him, all gazing at her with the same too-slow look.

"Hey, Trip," he said, after a long pause. "We, uh, saw you go down there."

"I'm trying to figure out who did this," she said. "Do you know who was here before the last meeting? Did you see anyone come or go who didn't belong here?"

It was like talking to empty space for all the reaction it got her. Carl smiled slowly, like a memory of how to smile. "So, we thought maybe you would know how to pick up...you know, where he left off."

"The drugs? No, I don't know anything about it. I only mixed what Neil told me to. I can't do it without him."

The group grumbled around her, and Trip shifted nervously. "Could you move? I need to find Jason."

"She should know," someone said behind Carl.

"I already told you I don't—"

"Rose said you should know what else to do."

Trip stopped. "Rose said I should know what?"

Carl smiled in apology. "Because you brought us back. You should know something about...what to do, right?"

"I don't," she said, desperately. "I don't, there isn't anything. Just...ignore it, can't you?"

That had been wrong, and the grumbling increased.

"Jason said..."

She only caught the first part of it, and she tried to identify the speaker under the lamplight. "Jason said what?"

"We shoulda asked him first," someone said, ignoring her. "He's doing everything right around here."

"He knows the turbines," Carl said. "Better 'n most of us."

"He's good with all the stuff around here," another said, and they all nodded.

"We should've asked him," Carl said. "'Course we should. He said there's always a way."

Trip balled her hands into fists that vibrated with energy. "Let me talk to him, then. I have a few questions for him, anyway."

They didn't react at first, and Trip saw a sort of hesitant, conversation-filled look pass among them.

"Still, she should know _something_," the first man said again. "We should take her to Rose."

"'Take' me?" Trip demanded. "You're not _taking_ me anywhere."

She drew back as one of them reached for her arm. "Don't touch me!"

"Won't hurt to talk to her, will it?" Carl asked, reasonably. "Everything's gone bad since Ben left, maybe since before. Jason's setting a lot right, but we can't dream anymore."

"Good!" Trip said. "You should be more like Marla. You should _fight_ it."

They blinked at her in withdrawal-empty surprise. "Marla?" Carl asked, and Trip kicked herself.

"There isn't an answer," she said. "There's no other way. The slaver bands reprogrammed you, and there's no way to undo it. Dreaming isn't the answer."

"That's not what Jason's saying."

She couldn't get a good idea where they all were, in the shadows, and twisting to face each voice as it sounded was starting to make her uneasy. "What's Jason saying?"

"She's lying," someone said. "Just take her to Rose."

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, and tried to feel more solid, to take up more space that might impress them. "Tell Rose she can come see _me_ if she wants. I'm busy."

"Busy doing what?"

"Trying to find out who killed Neil!" she shouted at him, and the street went silent.

The blood was roaring in her head, seething around her ears until she could barely hear the murmurs around her. Her fingers tingled with uncertain energy as she realized they had her backed against the lab door, like Neil had been in the square.

"She doesn't care," one of them said, meaning Trip. "She's a freelifer, too."

Trip hesitated, not sure where the voice came from. "I'm not—"

"Just grab her. Get her to Rose."

Carl reached out, slow and careful, like he was approaching a wild animal, and Trip scrambled away.

She tried to dart around Carl and past the hands that reached for her, but she misjudged the distance, and someone grabbed her by her arm and hauled her back. "Come on, she's just gonna talk with you," he said.

"Let go!" Trip squirmed away and half-stumbled. "You can't do this!"

She backed into the next set of hands and lashed out in a blind panic. Her fist connected harder than she expected and the man grunted in pain.

"Hey!" Carl yelled, uselessly. "Hey!"

Trip got another few steps before another enslaved came out from behind the lab and made a grab for her.

She spun away and headed the other way. "Get away from—help! Somebody, _help_!"

But the town stayed quiet, with doors and windows firmly shut on the scene, and she wondered how long they'd been waiting for her to come out of Neil's lab.

"Come on, just calm down," Carl said. "We're not gonna hurt you."

Trip's hand fumbled for her EMP, thankfully still at her belt. She flipped off the safety and brandished it like a grenade. "Anyone comes one step closer, and I'll scramble you, do you understand?"

"Won't work," the closest one said. "We're not mechs."

"It'll jump your heart while it's already beating," Trip said. "You'll be lucky if it starts back up."

They held back briefly, contemplating whether she was bluffing.

"I mean it," she said, and started to back away, keeping the EMP at eye-level where they could evaluate the risk. "Let me go. I'll talk to Rose and Jason, but I'm going there myself."

She really hadn't realized how many of them there were, and when she thought she was far enough from the semicircle, she lowered the EMP a fraction.

There were footsteps behind her and practically on top of her before she had the chance to raise it again, and the man pinned her arms to her sides.

"Let—_go_!" Trip panted, but he held on tight. "Somebody _help_!"

A hand pressed over her mouth and she pitched her head back, catching him full in the face.

"Ow! Bitch!"

She didn't recognize the voice, and she elbowed him hard. The blow struck off-balance, and the EMP flew from her grip.

Trip scrambled away and looked up at the windows that lined the street. "_I know you can hear me_!" But the shutters couldn't be bothered, and Trip wheeled in terror. "Please_, help!"_

"Shut up!" someone said, close by. "Shut her up already!"

It was like being surrounded by mechs, but without the clicking as they extended their arms to her, practically hearing the hinges grind as they advanced, to haul her onto the slaver ship and bear her away to Pyramid. But this was worse, because they were human, all of them, and just as deaf as the mechs would be.

She backed away, her hands empty but still in front of her, threatening them with nothing. Trip almost heard the footsteps behind her in time, but didn't see so much as imagine the object coming down.

And the last thing she shouted, like she always did when trouble was too close and not likely to veer off, was all she managed to get out before it was too late.

"Monkey!" she screamed, willing the sound of his name to carry across the wilderness. "_Monkey_, please, where are you? _MON_—"

The explosion on the left side of her head was startlingly loud and precise, and darkness snapped shut on her.

* * *

><p>It was hard work, picking through the mess of Pigsy's scrapyard for energy cells. Half the time, he didn't have any idea what he was looking for, and he couldn't imagine that the porker left much to be scavenged, after being here for so long. He found the first one totally by accident, nestled under a mech shell that collapsed under him while he was climbing. It was only good luck that it didn't crush him, and his reward for crawling out alive with a thrumming, still-working energy cell that would set Trip's eyes sparkling.<p>

He wasn't sure how much she'd need to keep her databand running out here, but it was the best he could do for now.

The canyon wasn't safe anymore, not if someone could walk right up to his house and deposit a dying child there without being seen. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been chosen for it, and it wasn't mercy that guided the kid there. Monkey didn't have an explanation for it, and he didn't like things he couldn't explain.

Pigsy's place wasn't clean or welcoming or even kind to the senses, but it was safe and hidden, for now, and that was all he needed. And if things at Liberty got any worse, Trip would want some basic amenities when she arrived, and he had to assume that meant power.

Monkey found another energy cell that day, and he was still smirking when he heard the buzzing of a mech approach. His hand was at the release latch for his staff before realizing it, and he damn near knocked the dragonfly from the sky when it dove at him.

It was one of Trip's, and the poor thing's metallic wings were beating slow, on their last reserves of energy, and he had to put a hand out to catch it when it fell.

The dragonfly chirped at him sadly, and he felt almost sorry for it. "The hell did you find me?" he asked instead. "Thought you were set to go to the canyon no matter what."

The dragonfly folded its wings back in response and switched its tracking and voice-command systems off to conserve power. Monkey hadn't thought he'd be needed so soon, but it was always possible—with Trip, it was always possible, and he couldn't get the message playing back fast enough.

He listened with faint bewilderment to her message, so calm and un-Trip-like, stating his exile and her plans to overturn it. She sounded stronger, which was good. Being exiled wasn't any great surprise, and he'd have done the same, if he were them. The problem was that the child had been at death's door long before he was at Monkey's, and he meant to find out why.

And his bike was at Liberty, so they'd have to do something about that. After that, though, to hell with them.

"Be safe, okay?" Trip's voice asked, and he reached forward to kill the last of the power.

Instead, the recording picked up again, and Monkey stopped with his finger hovering over the off button as another voice, younger and male, started up again, and the message changed completely.


	13. The Devil You Know

Thirteen: The Devil You Know

* * *

><p>The pain found a way to follow, masquerading as dreams of falling, or drowning, or being crushed in a mech's pincers until the air fled from her. Trip ran from faceless men who pursued with weighty boots, or from mechs with blood in their jaws, or from the simple feeling that something she didn't want to meet was following, forever within snapping distance of her heels.<p>

There were voices, cutting through the fog-dreams like blades, but still blurry and indistinct when they reached her. Trip could never tell whose they were, or where they came from, and she dipped under again before she could give it enough thought.

* * *

><p>Monkey couldn't remember if he'd ever approached Liberty at night before. Whenever he visited, it was always with the sun at his back. Once or twice, it might be so late that the sun would be ahead of him, dipping into the horizon like wildfire. But this late at night, there was nothing glowing in any direction, and Liberty's few lights were almost lost in the crags of the rock, like they were meant to be.<p>

He crept around the southern edge of the settlement, at a safe distance. He'd be hard to see on foot, even if he came a quarter of a mile closer, but he waited.

Trip couldn't have known about the second message. She'd never have allowed the dragonfly to go out like that, carrying news in its memory that made a lie of hers. Everything was only a temporary disaster, for Trip. But the kid had better instincts, and Monkey would owe Geoff for a long time if he was right.

"And we can't find Trip anywhere," Geoff had said, again and again, as Monkey replayed the message until he drained the last of the dragonfly's battery.

He never should have left.

The light at the bridge watchtower was flickering steadily, like someone waving a hand in front of it, or shining a databand high enough to be seen and shutting it off again, too slow to be a malfunction. Monkey counted the flashes, waiting for a sign that meant Geoff was on duty, and he could come closer without getting shot for it. It came to this, trusting some teen kid to warn off the other guards, to hide his approach with whatever bullshit he came up with.

He shifted, adrenaline surging ahead of schedule and useless to him for now, and blew warm air on his hands.

Trip was there, somewhere, drowning in the sort of people-tangled mess that never ended well. There was so much wilderness to claim, open and damn near endless, but the people wanted community. They wanted to congregate in thick clumps like rats looking for warmth, and Monkey let the shudder run through him to shake it off.

Finally, as he was ready to start ahead, with or without a safe signal, there was a blast on the far side of the community, close to the noise of a gunshot. But Monkey knew the noise of an engine backfiring, and it wrenched him forward.

He saw the lights flicker on, toward the source of the racket, and Monkey took off at a run, straight for the bridges. He crossed the distance too quickly to change his mind, and only heard imaginary shouts of alarm once or twice on the way. But there was no warning call from the watchtower, and the city was silent, at least the side he was coming up on.

The bridges were already down, and there was someone at the controls, just a smudge of bright skin in the darkness.

The shape started toward him, then paused and rocked back, and whistled a birdcall, clean and sharp.

Monkey waited a second longer to make sure, then put his staff away as Wren stepped into the moonlight and motioned him forward. "Come on."

"Where is she?"

Wren flitted ahead without answering, her hair waving behind her like a flag. Monkey followed her light footsteps, with no choice but to match her pace. She ducked under windows, stayed out of the lamplight, and made use of every scrap of shadow. Monkey followed her, only having trouble in the places where it would have been helpful to be a quarter his size.

Doors opened every once in a while, and they had to scuttle into the darkness, away from the traffic in the street, until it was safe to continue. There were the regular noises of the town, too, the ruckus Monkey had already forgotten since he left. Every time a window opened, or a pot hit a gas burner too hard, he had to remind himself that these were people, regular, ordinary people, and he needed to stop reaching for his staff.

It took them a long time to get across town like that, stealing a few yards at a time. Eventually, Wren ducked down a path to the back of a row of buildings, and she scurried to the door at the end and undid the latch with practiced, certain hands. When the door creaked open, she nodded, and Monkey slipped inside.

She scampered ahead of him, to light what would be safe to, and Monkey watched as her house, hers and Geoff's, slowly grew warmer.

When she was done, she came back to the center of the kitchen, where the back door led into the alley, and stared at him with dread-filled eyes.

"Geoff's out there," she said quietly, as if the closed doors weren't enough to hide her voice. "He's distracting them, but he'll be back."

"Where's Trip?" he demanded.

Wren's mouth twisted around an answer he probably wouldn't like.

Monkey had to stop himself from imagining a thousand scenarios, every one more awful than the last, and many of them slashing him hard in the stomach like a shard of glass. He crouched, having to force calmness on himself to do it without lunging. "Wren, where—"

The expression on her face was enough to drive new fears into him, but Wren only shrugged. "We don't know."

* * *

><p>Waking was like being dragged behind something slow and powerful over rough terrain. Every step closer to surfacing brought fresh pain that hit her in waves, like her head smacking against the same rock, over and over, and she would have given up if it hadn't seemed so important not to.<p>

Trip lifted her head slowly and cracked her eyes open, expecting anything.

"Well," Rose said, with unfair primness. "You should know that you broke Liam's nose."

She was sitting against the wall in a straight-back chair, looking for all the world like Trip had managed to interrupt her.

"Rose?" Trip managed, and pushed her tongue through the taste of blood. "What—ow. _Ow_."

"Stop that," Rose said. She stood slowly, or maybe Trip only saw it slowly. "You stupid, foolish girl. What were you thinking?"

Trip remembered the rough feel of someone's hands on her, and being hauled off like a prize. "They...they said they were taking me to you?"

"And you couldn't be bothered to walk across town?"

Trip's eyes were letting her focus on Rose's face, but only just. "They attacked me."

Rose puffed her cheeks at that and bent forward to touch Trip's head.

"Stop that," Rose said, as Trip jerked away. "You went and scared everyone, screaming in the street like that. What were you _thinking_?"

Trip managed to hold still enough for Rose to walk her fingers across the side of her head. The shape of it seemed wrong, like Rose had to accommodate more space than normal, and Trip could feel the egg-sized lump rising up under the skin.

Rose snorted, unimpressed. "Nothing you can't survive."

As she moved away, Trip swung her head around gingerly, and the rest of the room came into focus. It was small and run-down, with no furnishings to speak of, and had a thick layer of dust over metal that meant no one had been inside for years. It could have been anywhere at all in the city.

Trip sat on the floor, propped up against a wall that seemed to bow in to fit her. The entire room creaked and swayed, just enough to tingle at the bottom of her stomach, like they were too high in the wind.

Her databand was gone. Trip's arm was cold and lighter than usual, and she could see the faint pressure lines where it used to be. The EMP was probably still in the street, crushed underfoot in the scuffle, and she felt utterly naked without either.

"Where am I?" She swallowed painfully. "How did I get here?"

Rose released a bit of her hair from behind her ear, twisted it to no effect, and put it back in place. "They panicked, the poor things. Liam hit you by accident when you broke his nose, and you collapsed. So they brought you to me anyway. Carl carried you — you should thank him."

"Thank him for _what_?"

Rose pressed her lips together and sat again.

There was an empty space in Trip's memory, right after the place where she'd been surrounded by the enslaved, with a look like wild, starving animals in their eyes. She remembered Carl, apologetic and useless, and the man who must have been Liam trapping her from behind. She remembered screaming for Monkey. But there was nothing between that and now.

"Why did they want me?" she asked. "Why did they say you think I know something? They kept saying it."

"Hm?" Rose peered out the window, into an inky sky. "No. They were over-eager, that's all. I said you _should_ know something. I doubt you actually do."

Trip's head felt like there were still jackhammers working at it, like mechs fighting in the space between her ears, and the ringing of their shells clashing should have been loud enough for Rose to hear from her perch near the window.

When Trip lifted her left hand to run it along the bump on her skull, it was lethargic and dream-slow, like it wasn't hers. The nerves in her fingers prickled, quarrelsome.

Her right hand, when she tried that, only lifted halfway before something tugged at the skin above her elbow, and Trip went perfectly still.

"Rose?" she said. Her brain was still slogging through mud, but it was getting clearer every second. "Am I...is there something on my arm?"

"Just for a bit," Rose said, not reassuringly.

The loop around her upper arm was thick, warm metal that felt heavy. It had power, and the LED near the inside of her arm flashed at her every now and then. "What is this?"

Rose ignored her.

Panic rose up like a storm, but Trip bit down hard on it. The band was two inches thick, and wrapped around her arm with little free space on any side. It stung when she tried to move, like it was welded to skin.

"Don't touch it," Rose said, still looking out the window. "Wait for Jason to come back."

Trip started to stand, pressing her hand against the wall. "Jason's been here?"

She was halfway across the room when the band surged on, and her breath caught swift in her throat as her nerves ignited. The band roared against her skin, feeding electrical bursts into her flesh that felt it could shear the muscle beneath.

The pain was worse than being cracked in the head, worse than anything she could remember. Trip staggered away from Rose and slammed back into the wall, where the band had been dormant. The effect dimmed as she slumped, and had stopped completely by the time she was back on the floor, blood screaming in her ears.

"Well, I wouldn't try that again, if I were you," Rose said, and there was poorly-concealed amusement in her voice.

"What—" The pain was gone, but the memory of it lingered, too close. Power hummed through the band. "What is it?"

Rose delicately crossed her leg at the ankle, as if none of it had happened. "Just a precaution. We don't want you running into the square, screaming your fool head off." Her tone took on a nasty, nasally quality that must have been her idea of Trip's voice. "_The enslaved took me—the enslaved are crazy..."_

"I won't," Trip said. "I wouldn't."

There was a pattern to the LED flash. When Trip started to move away from the wall, the frequency increased. When the light was near-constant, a charge began building behind it. "Rose, get this off me."

"Why would I do that?"

Trip fit her pinky under the band and pulled hard, until her muscles were taut as violin strings, and she wasn't sure which would give way first. "I won't say anything, I promise. Just get this off me."

In her chair, straight and proper as a new doll, Rose leaned forward slightly, sighting something in the street, then fell back in disappointment.

She was waiting for Jason. Trip tried to stand again, but the band was hyper-sensitive and wouldn't let her any closer to Rose. There was a five-foot circle out from the wall where Trip was safe, but beyond that was as inaccessible as if there were spiked fencing between her and the ways out.

"Rose," she tried again. "Did Jason do this?"

Rose bristled defensively at the sound of his name, but didn't respond.

Trip swallowed. "Please. _Please_, Rose. This is crazy. You know that, right? Jason's crazy—you can't listen to him, he's involved somehow, I _know_ it, and I—"

Rose was up and out of the chair in a blink, large and out-of-focus that close, to snatch at Trip's chin with a narrow forefinger and thumb. "You be _quiet_," she snarled. "I'm not having you run out of here, with your head bleeding and full of all sorts of stories and conspiracies. You've been a problem ever since that day you showed up at Pyramid. Right now, so help me, you sit there and don't move another inch until I say so."

Rose's voice was icy and menacing, and her fingers tightened on Trip's chin.

"Do you understand me?" Rose asked, hissing it, and Trip nodded slowly.

Rose released her and Trip leaned back to flatten herself against the wall as if it could absorb her.

The chair creaked faintly as Rose settled in it again, smoothing out her skirt and fighting to look peaceful again. She drew herself together, years beyond picture-pretty but trying anyway, and gazed out the window with renewed fervor.

"Now what?" Trip asked. "You can't keep me here forever."

"Jason's taking care of Graham, but he should be here soon. He'll know."

"What do you mean, he's taking care of Graham?"

Rose crossed and recrossed her legs, and Trip suddenly realized she must have been there for hours, waiting for her to come to. "Neil's responsible for all of it," Rose said, and there was enough poison in her voice to condemn him all over again. "Neil infected that poor boy, the same way he did with the rabbits."

"The...?"

The rabbits were feverish and half-dead, some trapped in sleep that wouldn't release them. They were shadows of animals, with bones and thin flesh under pale fur that hid rashes.

"No," Trip said. "He wouldn't."

"Just how thick are you?" Rose snapped. "You saw the rabbits, didn't you? In his lab? Jason said you looked right at them."

"But, Neil wouldn't..."

"After everything else he did," Rose said, "why are you still surprised?"

They didn't know Marla was enslaved, and Trip couldn't tell how much of the story was a secret she was meant to keep, or how long Neil had to stay a hated man before she could come to his defense, far too late to be of any use.

"What's Jason doing with Graham, then?" she asked.

Rose smiled warmly. "He's going to save him, thank God," Rose said. "Neil had the cure all along, or was working on one. He moved on from testing animals to testing people. And you can't even blame his prejudice on that. Graham was never enslaved, heaven knows. No matter what Marla says, her grandson was pure evil."

Trip couldn't close her eyes for fear of seeing Marla, straight-backed and strong at Neil's grave, so she turned back to the band instead.

It was Pyramid technology, or something close. Trip eased the tip of her finger back under it, shielding the movement in the times when Rose couldn't be bothered to look at her. The band hummed with energy it was harvesting from her own body heat, only to pour it back into her when she prodded it too hard. Trip tried to lever her finger against it from the inside, and the LED turned frantic until she stopped just shy of another shock.

"We should have had someone like him from the start," Rose said, so unexpectedly that Trip went still.

Rose didn't so much as glance at her. She gazed out the window diligently, as if awaiting sunrise. "It would have been so much better with him running this town," she said, wistful. "Instead of some stupid girl just out of her teens and a mechanic, of all things. And we should have gotten rid of that beast the first day."

She seemed to have forgotten Trip, although she couldn't have, and Trip inched her finger along the metal band.

"It wasn't a surprise when Mark got those photos," Rose said. "It was just hard to believe no one saw it before. Can you imagine if he ever set his sights on the children here? What if Graham went missing? Or Wren?"

"Monkey didn't—" Trip started, then ground down on the rest of the argument as Rose's eyes gleamed with fire.

Rose went back to smoothing the edges of her skirt. "We've needed someone like Jason for a long time. He would have seen what that man was, right off. He'd have found out what Neil was doing, too."

Trip heard gospel in Rose's voice, pure and shining admiration, and she slowly tugged against the band again.

"Rose," she said, careful and soft, and Rose's head just barely tilted to her. "I know you don't want to listen to me."

"I suppose you can't help being foolish," Rose said, grudgingly.

Trip drew in a breath through her nostrils. "Neil was talking with someone using the dragonflies, out there. That's where he must have gotten all the information. He didn't know about the turbines, or the perimeter, or any of it. Someone was telling him what to do. Maybe he...had a reason. I don't know. But there's something else going on, and _please_, you have to listen to me."

"Or what?" Rose asked, bored.

"Something awful is going to happen," Trip said. "I don't know what. I just...this is _wrong_, you have to know it. Everything here is wrong."

"As soon as Granville gets the evidence, they'll take care of that monster at the canyon, and the children will be safe again," Rose said, not hearing her at all. "And Jason will know what to do with you."

"Rose, you can't trust him. Look..._look_ at me! He did this, didn't he?"

Rose scoffed angrily, but didn't turn from the window. "Do you hear yourself? You sound insane. Right now, you're the most dangerous thing to everyone here."

"I am?" Trip asked. "_I am_?"

"Incompetence is danger enough," Rose said.

"What are you getting out of all this?" Trip asked. "What did he promise you?"

Rose might have answered, but they heard footsteps in the hallway, and she stood. "About time."

"About time for what?" Trip asked, but Rose ignored her and went to the door.

Trip shut her eyes for a moment, dizzy again, and heard the sound of Rose leaving, presumably somewhere into the hall. She concentrated on breathing, just pulling in air and pushing it back out of her, to make a rhythm she could follow. She considered the pulses coming out of the band, measuring it against herself.

The door opened and shut again, and something heavy settled on the floor next to her.

"Oh, God. Look at you," he said, too close, sounding kind but disappointed.

She winced and opened her eyes, and Jason was sitting next to her, his hand hovering near her wounded head. Trip had pulled back as far as she could, and the band blazed warningly.

Jason's hand brushed her face, his fingers light and warm. "Trip," he said, and she hated the sound of her name in his mouth. "Why couldn't you just leave when I told you to?"

* * *

><p>There was a time when he'd been able to find her anywhere. They'd crossed the continent, senses linked, and he would wake sometimes in a near-panic that he wasn't getting any feedback from her, only to realize that she was in such deep sleep that she barely registered in his headband anymore. But she was always there, her breathing soft and dream-even in the crook of her arm, and he would take over the watch duty that she'd been unable to get through.<p>

Now, with a city of talking, breathing, sleeping people, too loud and close and damn complicated, he couldn't tell which of the slapdash, brightly-lit buildings she was in, and he wanted to raze the whole thing.

Wren whistled at him, a little more desperately than the last time, her mouth long since dry in trying to call him down from the rooftops, but Monkey didn't go back to her yet. The tin roofs were too loud to leap to without earning the exact sort of attention they didn't want, so he had to make quick scrambles to the ground and climb back up. He didn't hear her voice, didn't honestly expect to, but it was better than being stuck in that house, with Wren waiting patiently for her big brother and trying to keep Monkey under lock and key until she knew what to do with him.

Monkey found a bit of pipe that thrust up into the sky, leading nowhere, and climbed it hand over hand until it started to sway with his weight. The night was growing thin around the edges, and dawn would be over the horizon in a few hours. He smelled smoke and metal and exhaust fumes in the air, the things that should have meant progress and prosperity, but they burned in his nose, and he just wanted to find Trip and go.

Finally, as Wren's whistle grew feeble, he lowered himself to the rooftop and raced along the catwalks back to her, easing into each step to keep the metal from clanging at him.

He nearly lost a foot as she slammed the door shut on him. "Don't _do_ that!" she whispered, terrified. "Please!"

"You don't know where she is," Monkey said. "And I'm not sitting around here."

"Just wait for Geoff."

Monkey snapped his staff out of and back into his holster, the clicks getting louder each time, until Wren tried to shush him again.

"What does this Jason guy look like?" Monkey asked.

Wren shrugged. "I don't know. Old."

"Everyone looks old at your age," Monkey said. "Try again."

Wren didn't look like she'd slept in days, and her hands trembled faintly as she held them up to her face. "His nose is crooked, here. A little. And his hair's all over. And he's tan, like you."

"About my age?"

Wren considered. "Ben's."

"Where did he come from?"

"He said a lot of places."

Monkey cursed under his breath at Trip, at her need to save everyone and everything, and moved to the door again.

This time, Wren saw him headed that way, and thrust herself between him and escape. "They'll _shoot_ you! They think you're taking kids."

"Is there anyone we can trust around here?"

Wren bit her lip, and spent enough time thinking about it that Monkey knew the answer. "No. Ben's gone. Nash is gone. I don't like Jason."

"Great."

He was still considering brushing past her to the door when someone knocked, with a rapid-fire pattern that must have meant something to Wren, because she scrambled to the door to unlock it. Geoff ducked inside, and Wren practically melted with relief.

"Hey," he said, at Monkey first. "You made it."

"Yeah," Monkey said. "Where's Trip? What took you so long?"

Geoff saw Wren staring at his hand, and he stuffed the mask into his pocket. "I followed Mark."

"Mark?" Monkey asked.

Wren perked up. "We thought, maybe we should follow Jason. But Mark might know where she was, too."

The possibility of Mark being involved in any way didn't exactly make the situation better. "Where did he go?" Monkey asked.

"The edge of town, near the old water pump station. No one lives out there. I can go with you."

Monkey was already checking his gear again. "No."

"I can help. You'll need someone to get you across the city. If even one person sees you—"

Monkey tested the charge on his staff and snapped it into his arm band. "No."

"Let me do _something_."

The staff had enough charge for a few rounds. Monkey checked everything else methodically, ready for hand-to-hand combat or mechs, or anything at all.

"Monkey, come on!"

"Shut it already. _No_."

Geoff was on his feet with wild energy that Monkey knew too well to trust. "I can help. Something's happening, and I should be doing something."

"You got me here," Monkey said. "That's good enough."

"So you're just leaving?" Geoff said. "That's it? You're getting Trip and running? That's not a plan."

"Yeah." Monkey looked at him, and the kid was almost trembling with the unfairness of it all. "Okay, you want to hear the plan?"

"Yes."

"Fine, here it is." Monkey looked to Wren, to include her, and pointed outside. "I'm going to find Trip, and we're getting the hell out of here. You're going to finish fixing my bike—Wren said you're almost done?"

"...Yeah. Yeah, it's close." Geoff was too excited for pride, but it was a near thing.

"Good enough to ride now?" he asked, but Geoff shook his head. "No, I'm not that lucky. Doesn't matter. You finish the bike. Take care of your sister. Take care of things here. I'll get my bike later."

"Yeah, sure," Geoff said dully. "Like they listen to me."

Wren danced her fingers up and down her arms, as if she were cold. "You're leaving? You and Trip, you're just going?"

"Yeah, for a while."

"Everyone's gone," she said, so quietly it was hard to hear her.

"What about Granville?" Geoff said. "Everyone thinks you took the kids. Mark had these photos. He was going to send them to Granville, so they could investigate them. They're of you, holding this sick kid, but they must be fake or something, because—"

"They're real," Monkey said.

He waited for that to deflate their faith in him, but Wren merely bit her lip, and Geoff blustered ahead. "How did the kid end up there? How did you...did he die?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

Monkey didn't look at Geoff, but at his sister, so close to the boy's age. There wasn't any point in mentioning the way the kid had been breathing, just before he died, or how he wanted his mother. He could tell them about where he'd seen that kind of emptiness before, but it wouldn't do them any good to know.

Monkey shrugged. "No idea."

"We know it's not you," Wren said, without prompting.

"Yeah," he said. "But it's just you two, then."

"But you _came_."

She balled her hands into tiny, ineffectual fists that were like clamping twigs together. Monkey considered her. "Of course I came. Your brother said Trip was in trouble."

"And you came," she repeated. "Everyone thinks you did it, and you came anyway."

"Yeah," Monkey said, impatient for the point. "And?"

Geoff hissed. "Shut up, Wren. You're being stupid."

"_You_ shut up," she said, soft but still huge as an earthquake. "And I'm not stupid."

Whatever Monkey had been thinking up and got lost, and Wren's eyes blazed at him from under wind-mussed hair.

They matched gazes for a long time, until Monkey reached out, slow and careful, and placed his hand on Wren's head. "Okay. Thanks."

"Go save Trip," she said solemnly.

"Will do."

"What the—" Geoff spluttered. "Ugh, it's...never mind, you're so stupid, anyway! Forget it!" He looked at Monkey in faint desperation. "Can we get going?"

Monkey took Wren around the shoulders and turned her toward him. He pointed at the top of her head, meaning her, meaning this small, newly terrifying creature. "You see this?"

"Yeah?"

Monkey pushed her toward Geoff. "After Trip and I leave, you stay here, and you take care of her. Make sure she doesn't get into any trouble."

"I don't—" Geoff started, then gave up. "Fine. Fine, I'll take care of her. It's not like I haven't been."

Monkey snapped all of his gear into place, one last time. "Get me to Trip, then get back here and lie low."

"Where are you going?" Wren asked. "After you find Trip, where are you going?"

"Pigsy's, for a while."

"What about after that?"

Monkey hadn't really thought about it. Safety and distance first, from the disaster that had been festering in the city. Beyond that, there was open road and thousands and thousands of other places they could be.

"Away," he said, after a bit. "Anywhere that isn't here."

* * *

><p>"I should have expected this," Jason said, and sighed so hard that Trip's hair fluttered. "You're so like her."<p>

Trip kept one hand balled at her side, in case Jason tried to lean any closer, but he didn't move to touch her again. She felt his gaze traveling between the pink scar on her cheek to the bump on the side of her head, like he was finding new faults in her. Finally, he grimaced on her behalf, and stood. "I never wanted this."

"What _did_ you want?" she asked, carefully.

"Well." Jason held up his hands, as if offering up the entire situation. "I wanted to make things better."

"We were fine before you got here," Trip said. "Everything was fine."

She felt the band grow tighter, but it was just her imagination.

"You shouldn't have been asked to do so much," Jason said, almost kindly. "It wasn't fair, was it?"

"Life's not fair," Trip said, feeling like she was on the wrong side of the argument somehow and resenting him for it anyway. "Get this thing off me."

"What will you do if I do?" Jason asked.

Trip paused, trying not to let it show that she meant to hit him, as hard as she had strength for.

"No," he said, because he must have seen it on her face anyway. "I don't think that's smart."

Trip's back ached from being flattened against the wall for so long, and she wanted to scream, loud and long enough for someone to come running. But there was no way of telling if they would.

The band flashed, in time with her heartbeat for a few moments, content for her to stay still and quiet. Trip willed herself to be shapeless and be able to slide her arm from it, but the band was too well-fitted. "You can't keep me here," she said.

"No, it's only temporary."

Jason came close again and knelt, his knuckles to her face to trace her scar, or smooth the scrap of hair that had fallen over her eyes.

"If you _touch_ me," Trip said, between sharp teeth, "Monkey will break your arms. Then I'll break everything else."

His hand stopped, inches from her. "Yes," he said. "I don't doubt it."

He stood and eased kinks out of his back, as if he'd been crammed in the room for hours, and not her. "You're a little young, anyway."

Trip bit back a response to that, because there really wasn't one.

He'd grown sturdier somehow, in the short time since he'd arrived. He strode from one side of the room to the other, claiming it in each step that beat like war drums in Trip's aching skull. There was no trace of the weak, dirt-drenched man who appeared at Liberty's perimeter days ago.

"You faked it," she said at last. "That day, the day you arrived. You weren't sick."

"Well, yes and no," he said. "It was a long walk."

He kept pacing the room, north to south or east to west, depending on where they were. Trip massaged the skin near the metal band, worrying it raw. "Why?"

"I honestly did forget to bring any water. Which, really, was incredibly stupid."

"That's not what I mean."

He went to the chair where Rose had been and unhooked something from the windowsill. It was tech, about the size of his hand, and its lights flashed warningly as he flipped it over.

"Signal relay for the proximity sensor," Jason said. "I guess I don't n—"

"No, you don't need to explain it," Trip hissed, because she understood the entire system as soon as she saw it. "And the other half is attached to me."

"Good girl. There's one by the door, too, in case you hadn't tried that yet."

Trip couldn't imagine when he'd have had time to build it, but it was definitely complete and working properly. Every time she so much as turned in its direction, the band flashed, just light enough for her to see, before tingling. Jason set it on the floor, and she watched it warily, like she expected it to explode.

"So make up your mind," she said, with nasty brightness. "Do you want me out, or do you want to keep me here?"

The band buzzed at her, only barely within her range of hearing, and it made her heart race like an animal pursued by something bigger and faster.

Jason's hands wrestled with his hair. "You could have left. I would have preferred that."

"What do you want? Why's it worth all this?"

His eyes went distant, like he was consulting something far-off, and Trip heard a dozen voices, all at once, calling her an idiot.

"I need the town."

There was more power at Granville, and more water farther east. There wasn't much at Liberty worth fighting for—it was where people went when they had nowhere else. Trip watched him, puzzled. "What do you need it for?" she asked.

Someone knocked, and Jason left her to go back into the hall.

Ben would be disappointed. This was the place where she needed to be cunning. She should be witty and persuasive and convince him to let her go, somehow. But there was no way to be smart and brave, not at the same time. And bravery was something she wanted, since no one was coming, no one was ever going to come, and she needed every scrap of it should could get.

The door eased back open. "Trip," Jason said lightly, as if they'd been discussing anything more civil. "There's someone here to see you."

He held the door, and Mark came in, sneaking furtive looks behind him and to Jason, his hands deep in his pockets. He looked aged, like everything that had happened to her had befallen him instead, and Trip was getting tired of that look.

His eyes immediately went to her bruised, swollen head. "God, Trip... She said...she said they didn't want to hurt you."

"Mark," she said dully, not sure who she'd wanted to come through the door, but knowing he wasn't it. "Did you know about this? Are you on their side, too?"

"No, no. Jeez, there are no _sides_." Mark sank in on himself. "I just...you're not well, Trip. You're acting crazy. You think Jason did all this stuff..."

"Jason _did_ do all this! All of it!" She tilted her face to the side, to show him the state of her, and let him see the band, too. "He's behind it all, somehow."

Mark pulled his lower lip between his teeth. "Trip," he said at last, and filled her name with all kinds of desperation. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not— What do you mean, 'this'?"

Mark gestured, meaning Jason, in the room with them, and Rose on the other side of the door, and maybe all the town. "This. Just...things are going to be better now. We know who's been taking the kids—"

"You're an idiot if you think I—"

"And Jason's fixed everything that Neil broke, and he's going to make things better here. You don't have to worry about it anymore."

Trip eyed him. "Do you know what Jason's planning, exactly?"

Jason was leaning against the wall near the window, well within earshot, but she didn't care. He gave her a condescending half-smile, daring her to give it a go, and went back to keeping watch.

Mark didn't seem concerned. "No, but—"

"He's _using_ you," Trip said. "He used Neil to get this far, and..."

"And what?"

Trip summoned everything she had left. "And he killed him. It wasn't some random enslaved."

"Why would he? Neil was an asshole," Mark said, explaining the idea to her. "You know that, right? He hated everyone from Pyramid. And one of them got him for it."

"No, he didn't. He might—"

"Why are you defending him?" Mark interrupted. "He sabotaged the bike, too. You found the bolt cutters, didn't you? Did Jason tell him to do that, too? Or was it because you two brought everyone here from Pyramid?"

"I don't know why Neil did that to the bike," Trip said. "I don't know what Jason would have gotten from it. But now he's convinced everyone he's going to save the town. We don't need saving."

"_We_ didn't need saving," Mark said, and Trip wished she didn't understand it that quickly.

"It wasn't real! Why does everyone—Pyramid wasn't _real_, Mark!"

Trip drew in another breath to repeat it, as many times as it took to get through their heads.

But he turned his head to the side, slightly, as if something had stung him. "You're still..."

"What, Mark?" she asked, angry and hearing it, and his eyes went wide.

"You're still calling me that."

Trip derailed slightly. "I didn't call you anything."

Mark's hands turned out at his sides, begging something. "You're still calling me Mark."

"Well, yeah, it's—" Trip almost said it, and he heard it in the words she just barely held back in time.

"It's not my name," he said quietly.

Trip felt him drawing away from her. "No, I know."

He swallowed. "We can go, if you want. I can tell them something, I don't know. We can get out of here, just us. Leave them."

Trip saw the hope of it flicker in his face, as if she'd run with him from Liberty. Him, and not Monkey.

"I'll do it, if you ask me to," Mark said. "I'll get you out. But...just once. I want you to say it, once, so I can hear it."

"Hear what?"

"My name," he said, so desperate for it that he drew toward her, like she had her own gravity. "You can keep calling me Mark after that. But...you know, it's been a long time since anyone's called me my real name." He smiled at her, half-starved for the sound of it, and in her voice. "Just once, then you can call me whatever you want. Promise."

There were so many names, in the beginning. Every person they unplugged from Pyramid. Every face that surfaced from the masks, every mouth they freed had a name it wanted to spill, right from the start. Everyone was so desperate to be placed, to be known.

He watched her eagerly, his hands unsteady at his sides, as if waiting for a gift.

"Come on," he said, and tried to laugh, grotesquely. "Just once. It's not even a long name, you know?"

But he knew, either from her face or the way she steeled herself before answering, and the light in his eyes was almost gone by the time she opened her mouth.

"I don't know," she said, at least giving him the respect not to cower from it. "I'm sorry."

"You—" Mark tried to smile at her, tried so hard that it hurt to watch. "No. You got hit pretty hard. I mean, your head's a mess right now, isn't it? It's not that important. We can run anyway. It's...not that big a deal."

He watched her, and Trip thought, and heard Monkey in her head, that Mark always watched her. It was the way Monkey looked at his bike, or how Geoff tore into new projects with relish. She should have known what hunger looked like before this.

"Mark," she said, deliberate, and he scowled slightly. "I don't know your name."

Tentatively, Mark reached out to touch her. "No, you're just hurt too bad. You'll remember later. Come on, let's go."

"No."

His hand settled on her shoulder, too tightly to be purely protective, and she pushed it away.

"The hell?" he asked, wounded. "You'd rather stay here? Stop being stupid. This is about that knuckle-dragger, isn't it? What is it going to take to make y—"

"He has a name," Trip said.

"He doesn't even have _that_! I've shown you what he is, and you still don't believe me!"

Even Jason looked up at the crackling in Mark's voice, and the way his face went taut and furious.

Mark growled at her. "He...he did something to you, didn't he? How long were you on the road with him, huh? All that time alone with you, he must have... What did you let that stupid ape—"

Her hand lashed out, and the sound of it striking his face reverberated in the small room, until it seemed like all the world had stopped, and only the noise of that blow rang in the air.

It wasn't enough to do much more than twist his head to the side, but Mark's eyes went wide and frantic with disbelief. "Wha—"

"That's enough," Jason said, suddenly closer.

Mark took a dazed step toward her, unsure whether that was the direction he meant to take at all. "Why did you..."

"Don't talk about him like that," she said softly. "Not ever."

"He's not coming!" Mark spat. The blow to his face was just starting to show, a fist-sized blush under his eye. "He can't. They know he's taking the kids, that he's doing something with them. He's not coming for you."

"Enough," Jason said again. "I tried to warn you she wasn't well yet."

Mark scrutinized her, trying to find something welcome and familiar left in her eyes but coming up empty.

"Come on," Jason said. "Out."

The punch couldn't have been that bad, and Trip's fist ached more than Mark's face could have. But he had to be led away, with Jason reminding him where the door was.

Mark looked back her, once, and she knew it would be weeks before she stopped remembering the way he did.

"Mar—" she started, but he twisted away.

She saw the signal relay just outside the door as it shut after him. It was too close to risk it, but Trip had to try anyway. After the fourth try, her arm didn't feel like hers any more, and she slammed back against the wall, gasping and letting the tears drip from her chin.

* * *

><p>Geoff was a halfway decent guide. He kept to the paths where Monkey could follow overhead without making too much noise, or being visible for too long on the catwalks. He stopped a few times, hand in the air, and Monkey froze wherever he was, sometimes mid-climb. A set of footsteps would pass, with too-loud voices, and Geoff would motion them ahead again.<p>

The old part of town was still a fair ways from the perimeter, but nowhere near the residences. It was near the cliff edges, too close to the crumbling rocks to really be safe anymore. Monkey could swear he felt the earth start to split under him, hundreds of yards down. The buildings draped against each other slightly, some angled out over the rock face and overlooking the sheer drop into nothingness.

There weren't even streetlamps this far out, and Monkey had to watch the kid scuttle by moonlight, crouching under awnings and sprinting from one hiding spot to the next, wearing a mask that covered his whole face, like he was the one being followed.

When Geoff turned down the same alley, came out, and tried another, Monkey dropped from the roof to join him. He hit the ground with a whisper, and Geoff's head shot up at the rush of air.

"It's...around here somewhere," he said slowly. "I swear I saw Mark somewhere here."

There were at least two dozen of the buildings, in various sizes and states of disrepair that made Monkey uneasy. "You can't be more specific?"

"I don't think so."

Monkey grunted.

Geoff readjusted the mask over his head. "I can help you search."

"Forget it. If you get hurt, or if this Jason guy finds you before I find Trip, what then?"

"I can take him."

Monkey heard something steely and strange in Geoff's voice, and he tried to find the kid's eyes in the shadows. "Let me handle that. Look after your sister."

Geoff hesitated a moment longer, watching the buildings as if Trip might emerge from one of them at his insistence.

"You hear me?" Monkey asked.

Geoff's databand sparked on, surprising both of them. Geoff twisted the volume off, and ducked behind a crate to scroll through the data without casting too much light.

"Is that Trip's?" Monkey asked, confused.

"What? No," he said. "Everyone has one. And vid screens. It's not that special."

The numbers flashed past, too speedy for Monkey to catch one digit of, and he scowled.

Geoff cocked his head and dialled the volume back up, just loud enough to hear with his ear pressed against the speaker. "Oh. Oh, shit."

"What?"

He picked at his mask and looked away, gauging the distance from where they were to the bridge watchtower. "They're doing a post check. They found the engine I rigged—they're trying to figure out if anyone's missing from their post."

"Can you make it?" Monkey asked.

The radio burst a little too loud. "Is he here?" someone asked, sounding angry through the static.

"Go," Monkey said.

Geoff started typing. "If I can call them off, and convince them—"

Monkey snapped the damn thing shut in front of his face, and Geoff blinked. "If they get to the watchtower and you're not there, they'll know. What do you think will happen to you?"

Geoff shrugged uneasily.

"What do you think will happen to _Wren_?" Monkey asked.

"Nothing," Geoff said, but his eyes were wide. "I might get in trouble, but she—"

"She let me in. She let the bridges down. Was that your idea or hers?"

Geoff sucked in so much air that the mask flopped in front of his mouth.

"I—"

He and Monkey turned as the alarm started up, wailing near the watchtower farthest from the bridges.

"Is that her?" Monkey asked.

"Yeah," Geoff said. "It was the backup plan, but..."

"_Go_."

Geoff threw a despairing look at Monkey, at the abandoned part of the city, and back to the rest of Liberty, in such quick succession that his eyes flickered in the faint light.

"I'm going back to the watchtower," he said, and drew himself up, like it had been his idea. "You find Trip."

"I'm on it."

"Good luck," Geoff said, and Monkey didn't have time to thank him for it before he ran off and vanished back into the city.

The alarm cut off like a whip crack just a few seconds later, but Monkey couldn't afford to think about it, and he turned back to the ghost town.

He looked over the endless empty doorways and lean-tos that had once been buildings, where the walls had strained against their supports and finally collapsed. This close to the edge, there was no activity, no way of telling how long it had been since anyone had come and gone. He listened as hard as he would in the wilderness, for signs that meant he'd have to fight, or run, or both. But the hissing and creaking and distant rush of the waterfall coursing through turbines were a city's noises, and were no use to him whatsoever.

He grumbled, and found his hand inexplicably groping at his forehead, feeling disconnected and hating that knowledge.

"Trip," he said. "I can't hear you when you need me. You have to tell me where you are."

The city was unimpressed, and Trip, wherever she was, didn't give him an immediate sign.

He began to prowl the streets, safer now that it was no light and all shadows. He was careful anyway, pausing here, listening there. But there was nothing to help him, and he kept going, faster and faster, until he was almost running.


	14. Find You in Darkness

Fourteen: Find You in Darkness

* * *

><p>If there was a simple, obvious way of getting out, Trip wasn't finding it.<p>

The band let her close enough to the window to edge along the wall, just enough to see that the only visible street was a pinch of it at the corner of the building, where it turned away and carried on into the rest of the city. She waited for a minute, to see if Mark or Jason appeared, but the street was silent and slick with moonlight.

She could hear the monotonous, distance-thinned rush of water over the cliff edge, hitting the rocks a good quarter-mile down, but she couldn't get close enough to see. All she had was the dark, murky sky, and rock faces. She was near the abandoned edge of town, where the rocks had grown unstable with time and had proven untrustworthy, but she had no way of knowing just where.

The window would overlook a sheer drop, if all she had were cliffs on this side, down too far for her to make any kind of jump. She prowled the room from end to end, clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then in a meandering, directionless zigzag that could have been anything. The room was empty, save Rose's chair and the bit of tech that sat blinking on the floor, letting her know from time to time when she got too close.

She couldn't get near enough to the door to see if they'd bothered to lock it. Even with her banded arm thrust out behind her, the handle was still inches from the tips of her fingers when the pain was too much and she had to retreat, her jaw set in pain and the band crackling against her skin. Dismantling it might be as easy as hacking a Pyramid slaver headband, but she couldn't do it without her databand, and she couldn't risk forcing it off, not without knowing what its tamper failsafe was programmed to do to her.

She examined everything, from the seams between the metal plates that formed the walls, to the gap in the floor that would admit her pinky but nothing else. She circled until her shoes started to wear paths on the floor.

She heard the alarm as a brief, distant wail, like a angry child, and she strained on tip-toe near the window, as if lifting herself off the ground would give her the extra distance she needed. But the noise shut off before she could recognize a pattern in it, as if someone had slammed down on the kill command without giving the all-clear.

She wished, for a selfish, stupid moment, that the alarm meant Monkey. His absence suddenly hurt, and she might have welcomed him bursting through the door, bringing the familiar rawness of him like open flame.

But Monkey was safer anywhere else, as far from Liberty as he could be. Her hand ached, where she'd hit Mark, and she was only partly sorry for it.

She was an idiot. They all were.

Neil didn't know a thing about the turbines, or the perimeter system, or any of it. He barely came up for air, and when he did, his mind was on his lab, or any number of things she hadn't known about him in all this time.

He got the information from someone else, and Jason was the only person to arrive at Liberty like a godsend, with all the answers right in his hands, and enough compassion for the enslaved to bring them flocking to him like a pre-fab congregation.

Trip started circling again and worked her way around the room, over and over until the shape of it was permanently burned into her mind, and the misshapen walls seemed as close to straight and proper as anything ever had.

* * *

><p>The dragonflies were restless in the tower, their sensors latching too quickly onto the stream of code that started up soon after the siren died, rising up in its place and proving itself far louder, in its way. It hit the databands, the vidscreens, and everything else in Liberty that had programming to catch the alert. The dragonflies listened, mechanically curious, and scanned through the data faster than any stupid databands could, and pinpointed the alarm faster than the rest of them. They rattled the code off to each other, dropping off and letting the others pick it up, until the box shuddered too hard and someone nearby kicked at it.<p>

But they heard the commotion, like a living thing that rose up in the data and woke everyone and everything in the city.

* * *

><p>When Jason did come back, Trip had just started to consider the relay point by the window again, turning it over in her mind, trying to part it out like she would if she could get close enough to touch it. She heard the door too late to surprise him, and he was in and shut the door behind him before she could stand.<p>

"Mark won't be coming back," Jason said, as if that were meant to reassure her.

When she didn't answer, he pushed a hand through his hair with nervous energy, and started pacing, the way she'd been before he arrived.

If he'd at least swapped out Ben's clothes for someone else's, didn't look like Ben might, if he lost weight and gained a sharp, too-smart look to him, maybe it would have been easier to see him doing all those things in Neil's place, guiding him as surely as if there had been strings tied at his wrists. When Jason lifted his head to look at her, on the pivot of every circuit he made in the room, she saw things flickering in his eyes, ideas and schemes that spun across as fast as lines of code might in her databand.

Even pacing, even glancing at her every now and then like she was a problem he needed to solve, there was something solid in him now, like he'd found his footing, and Trip wished she could do the same.

"You must think we're complete idiots," she said at last.

He didn't break stride, didn't so much as look at her, and Trip bit back everything she wanted to say, but was at too much of a disadvantage to justify. He continued to pace, his fingers laced behind his back and clenching back some kind of energy that should have scared her.

She was too close to the window without remembering having moved at all, and the band began to buzz. She hooked a finger over it, in the thin space between metal and skin, and earned another shock for it.

"Don't touch it," Jason said, and sounded irritated. "You don't even know what it does."

"I know enough," she said through clenched teeth, willing her voice to stay stable while the pain subsided. "How bad is the nerve degradation, if I force it off?"

He wouldn't look at her, which scared her more than anything. "Just don't touch it," he said.

"How bad?" she insisted.

He clamped forefinger and thumb around his own arm, mirroring hers. "You'll lose the use of that arm, permanently. It won't kill you..." His arm dangled at his side. "...but."

She grabbed at the band reflexively, and Jason worked his way around the room another three times before her heart stopped galloping.

"So what do you want?" she asked. She heard herself swallow, and felt shards of nothing in her throat. "If you think the city has anything valuable, you wasted your time. Even if you wanted the tech for yourself, you can't exactly move the turbines or the hydraulics. Those are the most valuable things we have."

When he didn't comment, she tried to rally herself. "People are going to figure out you're lying to them eventually," she continued. "They'll have to. It doesn't make sense—none of it makes _sense_, and you're right in the middle of it."

He stopped pacing to look at her. "You don't understand."

"Then explain it to me."

Jason came a few steps closer, and stopped just out of reach. "I don't want the turbines, or the hydraulics, or any of that."

"Am I just supposed to believe you?" Trip demanded.

He lifted his hands faintly in frustration. "How long has it been?" he asked. "Since that day. That exact day, when Pyramid went down? A year?"

"What?" The change in direction threw her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's been a year," Jason said, as if she'd ever have forgotten.

"I guess," Trip agreed warily. "Just over a year."

"How long, exactly?"

He waited for her to remember every single day, and of course she did, right from the second Pyramid went offline until now. Every day in the desert, then over rocky terrain that was just as bad, miles and miles and miles of it, until only half of them were home.

"Thirteen months," she said, her teeth clenched. "Two weeks."

Jason smiled in approval. "Yes."

"So what?"

"Thirteen months," Jason said. "Two weeks. Four days, actually." He cut her off when she moved to interrupt. "And you _still_ don't get it."

"Don't get what?" she asked, but she knew. He'd been there long enough to know full well she didn't get it. There was more, there was always more, ghosts of things the enslaved whispered to each other but not to her. Voices Marla heard, and Monkey heard, and they kept it to themselves.

He lifted a hand, but it moved to his own face, to run over the scar tissue there. "You have no idea what you destroyed. Or what it did to them."

"Well," she said, "they won't tell me. What does this have to do with you?"

He chuckled, so soft and sad she almost felt something like pity. But she had to remember Graham, lying sick and fever-drenched on the other side of the city, waiting for Jason to swoop in and save him.

"How does that give you the right to do—all this?" she asked.

"I'm going to do what you couldn't," he said. "I'm going to help."

"This isn't help! _We_ helped!" she said, and surprised herself with how much she still felt that. "We saved them!"

"Do you have any idea what you _saved_ them from?"

Trip took a deep breath, tried to find something cleansing in it, but only tasted blood. "It wasn't real."

"Not to you," he said. "Not to anyone who was never enslaved. But to them, it's very real. It was more real than..." He gestured out the window, to the dark, limitless sky. "This."

She realized, then, exactly what she was dealing with, and Trip threw open her hands in desperation. "This is real. This world—this is what we have. And you can't plug yourself into a better one."

Jason made a painful, subconsious stabbing motion in his temple, where the head band would have plugged into him. "If you'd listen, you'd hear I'm giving you a chance to fix it."

She stared. "Fix what?"

"What you destroyed a year ago."

"Why would you want to? We freed everyone—we saved them from Pyramid. He enslaved us, _killed_ us—"

"He gave us the old world back," Jason said. "And you never saw it."

Trip hadn't dipped her face into the mask like Monkey had, hadn't lit up with whatever it gave him, fed through the slaver band that could torture him if Pyramid ever wanted.

If she ever wanted.

"Then you tell me," she said. "Tell me what I destroyed. I didn't see it then. What did I do? What did getting rid of Pyramid really destroy?"

Jason looked at her, like he was expecting a trick, but she only waited.

"I can't explain it," he said at last.

"Try." When his face started to close off again, she massaged the band at her arm, and added, "Please."

He sank back, more mental than physical, falling back into whatever memories Pyramid had left in him. Trip saw him drag it up out of the depths, the dreams he could no longer get to, even with a sedative deep enough to send him under for days.

When he was ready, he leaned forward again, his hands carving the air in front of him, like he was building shapes out of nothing. "The world before the war—it was so much more than the ruins, then the broken bits of mech we see everywhere. Before the war, there _were_ no mechs. Nothing hunted us, nothing came after us."

He looked at her, and she caught something, some kind of begging understanding from him, but she stayed carefully blank.

"The world now," he continued, his voice rough, "what they left us, it's worthless. It's savage and barbaric and ugly—"

"It's beautiful," Trip said, thinking of the wild, overgrown cities that chaos had reclaimed; of the places that had rotted and collapsed, and were loud with the sounds of what nature overtook them.

Jason shook his head, like she wasn't listening. "No. This isn't what it's meant to be. What Pyramid remembered—that's the world we were meant to have," he said, gathering speed and strength as he went. "That's our real inheritance. The memories of the world before the war, kept safe at Pyramid—that's all we want."

But there was no imagined, better world in Jason's cupped hands, and the longer she stared at them, the more she could see them holding something heavy and solid enough to bash in the back of Neil's skull. Neil, who hated the dreams as much as Jason wanted to make them real again, as much as they ever were.

Trip waited, her breath quivering in her chest like it would break free if it saw the chance.

"It's gone," she said, and his face fell, just a little. "It wasn't real. Maybe they were, once, but the memories were only ever data for you. The dream's not real."

"You have no idea..." he started, and walked his fingers over the car on his face. "You couldn't."

Jason pressed his fingers into the mottled skin around his eyebrow. "I'm trying to give you a chance," he said again. "Why won't you take it?"

"You didn't give Neil one."

Jason went rigid at the sound of his name, and Trip felt a moment's satisfaction.

"I'm sorry," he said, in a careful, controlled tone that must have cost him dearly. "I'm sorry that your friend is dead."

"Like you didn't have anything to do with it."

"He forced a lot of hate on himself," Jason said. "He was exactly what they've been unable to escape everywhere else. This was supposed to be the safe place for them. It's what the enslaved always said—go to Liberty. And they do, and they found Neil."

"And that gave you the right to kill him?"

Jason's eyes went paper-flat, and the last bit of human in him gutted out like a pinched candle. "It would have happened sooner or later."

Trip found the heel of her foot sliding away, back toward the window, but she was trapped between one impossible thing and another, and she could only hold her ground between them.

"So what now?" she asked, when she could. "You're giving me a chance to do what for them? 'Fix' Pyramid?"

When he opened his mouth, she pressed on. "Because you can't. You know that. If you know so much about the turbines, and the sensors, or anything about tech at all, you know—Pyramid was the source of it. And he's gone. There's no dream left. You have to live without it."

He bared his teeth at her, with or without realizing it. "Do you have any idea what it was like to get unplugged like that? Do you have any idea what it _does_ to people?"

"Yeah, it might be _hard_," Trip said. "But it's your own fault if you can't live without it."

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, and there was a threat somewhere under the words.

His fingertips dug deep into the scars on his forehead, up and through his eyebrow. Scars that didn't quite make sense as marks from a slaver band, that were more likely to be battle scars than anything else. Scars like Monkey's.

Jason drew in breaths through his teeth and released them, trying to keep himself under control. "You know," he said, trying for conversational and still sounding half-rabid, "some of us never wanted to be unplugged."

He was practically making fresh wounds with his fingernails, digging tracks through skin and barely looking at her. "It—getting dumped out of Pyramid like that—it's like you didn't realize you hadn't been breathing, and you had to learn a totally new way to do it. It's like dying."

"It's not dying," Trip said, but under her breath. "It's waking up."

"And some people couldn't take it," he said, either not hearing her or pretending not to. "The ones that didn't step off bridges...or right into a pack of raiders..."

He turned away. "You still hear about that, sometimes."

"There were never any suicides," Trip said, softly, and knew it wasn't true as soon as she did.

Jason ignored her. "But some of us fought. Some of us heard things—pieces of the dreams that didn't leave. And we decided that the only real way to deal with it was to go back."

"Back..." Trip repeated, deaf to what the word was supposed to mean. "Back to Pyramid? It was a prison!"

His eyes blazed. "It was _home_ for us!"

"And you tried to go _back_?" she demanded, and her voice escalated. "Is that what happened? Is that how—is that how you got _that_?"

"We tried to go back," Jason said, not really answering, but his hand went to his scars. "But it didn't work that way."

Trip couldn't imagine. She tried to picture someone walking up to Pyramid mechs, hands out and open, ready for enslavement.

"No," she said, and felt the horror of her home, of everyone she knew, choking on blood and dying, dying everywhere, when Pyramid came. "No, it doesn't work like that. It never would."

"You don't know that," he said.

"I _do_ know it," she spat at him. "Everyone, everyone here—and Dad, _Dad_—died here, because Pyramid came. The mechs never cared about white flags or volunteers. Pyramid killed some and enslaved others, because he wanted to, and you're stupid if you ever thought—"

She heard, a minute too late, exactly what he'd said.

"It wasn't just you," she said slowly. "You said, _we_ tried."

Jason's face went stone-still.

"Is _that_ what this is about?" she said. "All this? Because you and your _girlfriend_ tried to go back? And because Pyramid did what he always does—"

"Shut up," Jason said, low and angry. "Leave it."

"Don't tell me to shut up! That's it, isn't it?" She was too close to him, too close to the way he held his arm half-coiled already. "Oh, God. Oh my _God_. You thought you two could walk right up to them...but they didn't just take you back, did they? They attacked, because that's what they do. You thought you could walk out with your hands in the air, and—that's it, isn't it? It got her _killed_, didn't it?"

She didn't see him move, but Jason was suddenly so close to her that she could see the way his face contorted, like strings pulled taught in the corners of his mouth, and she could almost feel the rage building on him.

"_Yes_," he hissed. "It did. But it didn't have to."

Trip held her breath, waiting for the blow, ready to dodge or duck or whatever she thought would be enough to get away when it came, but Jason kept totally still, like he was afraid of what would happen as much as she was. She could see him holding back, wrestling with it, until he finally took a step away from her, slow and heavy.

"I wanted," he said, around a locked jaw, "to give you a chance to help fix it." His eyes went to her face, and slid off again. "And Mark was right about one thing—no one's coming for you. And even if he does, the whole town's ready."

Trip's heart stuttered, and she fought past it. "If I don't help you, and you do something...someone's going to wonder what happened to me," she said, braver than she felt. "And when Ben comes back, he's going to wonder why I'm...gone. And you won't be able to convince him that—"

"Ben's not coming back."

Trip's mouth opened without sound for a moment. "What?"

But Jason scowled past her, his eyes focusing on nothing.

"What?" she repeated, and refused to let herself hear the tremble in her voice. "What do you mean, Ben's not coming back? Of course he's coming back—he thinks Graham's dying, he wouldn't just go away and—"

The siren burst on again, shrill and demanding, and they both turned to the window as if they could see it. Jason frowned, and tapped at his arm for a databand that wasn't there. They waited for the racket to cut off, but it didn't, not in the time it took Trip to count to thirty, measuring out seconds with heartbeats, as close as that could possibly be.

Jason turned toward the door.

"What did you mean about Ben?" Trip asked, before he could leave. "What did you _do_ to him?"

He ignored that. "Think," he said instead, just inside the doorway. "Really think about what you did to these people, and decide whether or not you're willing to help them."

"I helped them," she said, lamely.

"No," he said, without any inflection at all. "You didn't."

"What are you going to do?" she asked, and was surprised to discover how scared she was, and how her fingers fluttered against her arm, like there was some independent life in them. "You can't go back—you know you can't! So what do you need the town for?"

Jason left, and the door snicked shut right after him.

Trip swore and spun toward the window to see if she could catch Jason leaving, down the narrow bit of street. But there was nothing save shadows she couldn't identify as anything at all, and the noise of the alarm still shrieking, reaching up half an octave before tumbling back down, to make sure they didn't stop hearing it.

"Shit," she said, and smacked the wall for good measure. "Shit!"

It was only after staring out the window for a few moments that she realized she was closer than she'd meant to be, and the band was merely humming on her, not yet buzzing with a building shock. She was still an armslength from the sill, too far to climb out just yet, but she was closer.

She crouched, then folded all the way down until the relay was eye-level. The battery indicator flashed lethargically, getting longer and longer between bursts, and Trip started counting the pauses between them.

* * *

><p>He saw someone, but the man was too far away and moving too quickly to identify or follow too far without being seen. Monkey watched him, even followed him just as far as the next street. He didn't recognize him, but it didn't mean much, since he didn't recognize more than a dozen of them. But it wasn't Mark, and that was a comfort of sorts. There was a sort of rocking in the man's footsteps, the way animals did when they learned to survive by being silent. He was fast, and as quiet as Monkey might be if he thought he were being followed.<p>

Monkey held onto the railing of the catwalk, half-crouched, and watched the man start to cut down an adjacent street.

He paused at the mouth of it, still as Monkey would have been, and peered back the way he'd come. Monkey had to stomp on the urge to keep after him, but the man was alone, which meant that Trip was still here, if she'd been here at all.

And while Monkey debated the usefulness of catching the man, to see if he knew anything, whoever he was made up his mind and darted down the alley, too fast to follow without damn good reason, and Monkey swore.

Back out over the eastern edge of town, past the watchtower that could have been a speck of dust, the sky was brightening out of pitch black, but only barely, and the stars slowly began to shudder and go out.

* * *

><p>The techs had limited battery life, and they were getting close to empty after Jason left.<p>

She tried the door first, but still couldn't quite get to it, and she had to reconsider the window. The chair Rose had been using was in reach, just barely, and Trip hooked her foot under the chair leg to drag it across the floor. The noise was shockingly loud, like she'd sent up firecrackers, and the racket of it startled her frozen. But no one came, or showed any interest at all, and she managed to get the chair in her hands.

"Okay," she said, more to herself than anything. "Easy."

She had to fight with the chair, a little, to get the back of it under the device. It leapt a bit as the chair legs caught her in the ribs and it all almost overbalanced on her, but she held on long enough to tip the relay onto the chair back.

It wasn't that heavy, but it took her two tries to walk the chair up the wall, pushing against it with all her weight, until the tech was at the level of the sill. She pushed it out, yanked the chair back, and the relay plummeted off into the darkness. It made a few satisfying clangs on the way down, striking the outside wall and the foundation beneath, then was silent for the rest of the drop.

Just like that, the band stopped humming, and Trip raced to the window and thrust her head out into the old night air.

There wasn't anything to land on if she jumped—just the rocks so far down that they were swallowed by mist and darkness. There might be enough places in the building seams to grab hold and work her way back to the safety rail and haul herself back up to the street, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

Something thudded in the street, like footsteps approaching, and that made the decision for her.

She grabbed the edges of the window and swung her legs out, gave the band a few seconds to consider responding, and coaxed the most of her weight to the edge. Her feet dangled out in front of her, suddenly small and worthless at the ends of her legs, and she gingerly started feeling for breaks in the building side where she could wedge them.

Monkey would climb as if he were born for it. He'd find small, invisible places to put his hands and feet, and scramble up and down the wall like he was more comfortable there than he'd be on the ground.

But Trip was half-blind in the dark, blood and adrenaline coursing through her head, and the street seemed very far away. She hoisted herself out of the window, belly flat against the wall, and started inching down the building side to the rocks beneath its foundation.

She couldn't hear the turbines from this distance, or anything mechanical. There was the wind, mournful and tired in the gaps between the rocks, and the constant roar of the waterfalls. Trip strained her ears, positive she heard voices, like snatches of conversation that meant Jason was back. The rocks bit into her hands until they were raw stubs, but she kept going, even when her finger slipped over an edge sharp enough to break skin.

The waterfall mist reached all the way here, collecting around the base of the city like cold fog. It drenched the stones when she tried to grab at them, and one of her hands struck out senselessly at something she thought would hold but broke free in her grip and tumbled into the ravine.

She had to stop again, a few yards from the safety rail. Once Jason got back inside and found her gone, he might recharge the remaining tech, or set up a new relay point around the building that would catch her before she could find solid ground. And if that happened, if the band came back online before she reached the street, she'd plummet, and she wouldn't be able to save anyone at all.

Footsteps came around the front of the building, too far for her to tell whose, and paused. She willed him to go away, but she heard the door open, slowly, and he was gone, back inside the building to find her missing.

When she tried to find a fresh hold, one that wasn't wet with mist and blood that must have been hers, she missed, and the weight of her arm swung back, overbalancing her.

The door opened again, faster than last time, and the footsteps thundered out into the street.

"Trip?"

She ducked down, as if Jason could possibly see her there, clinging to the rocks for dear life. Her head throbbed, and the world began to spin as her second hand slowly started slipping. Her feet were probably still there, but she couldn't tell anymore, and some unhelpful part of her brain just wanted her to sleep.

"_Trip_?"

The voice was distant and unrecognizable, and all she could hear was water and blood sloshing in her head.

She pressed her head against the rock, trying to force herself into whatever nooks might be left. Everyone in the city was in danger, somehow. Her town, every single person in it, was enthralled with a madman. And she was stuck to the cliff side like an idiot, losing feeling in her hands every moment, and the mist smelled like iron and blood.

The next handhold was too slippery to get a good grip on, but she'd already shifted her weight to it and wasn't ready when it gave way. The chasm pulled at her, looming up out of the dark, and she scrambled to find another jutting rock before she tipped back.

Trip reached out, her fingertips just brushing the rock face, but she was too far already, and she was starting to slip.

Her hands clawed out in front of her, but there was no safety line, nothing to grab hold of, and everything went slow and unavoidable as she started to turn, until the gap was wide open in front of her.

Something dark and solid sailed overhead and slammed into the rocks.

Trip felt a hand grab her wrist, as far as she could tell where her wrist was, and haul her away from the drop. Warmth surrounded her fingers, and Trip twisted away in blind panic. "Let go! _Let_—"

"Dragonfly," Monkey said, so close that his mouth had to be right by her ear. "Hold still."

"Where are you?" she murmured, because he wasn't real, he couldn't be.

In spite of that, he pulled her to him, and she fitted her arms around his shoulders without thinking, as familiar as her own skin.

* * *

><p>Monkey couldn't be back in the city, because he was out at the canyon, so far that even the dragonflies couldn't find him; or he was gone, truly gone, back into the wilderness, as far from Liberty as he could get, where Mark and the others would never see him again.<p>

But he was here, maddeningly warm and alive, and he didn't vanish for the fifty feet he carried her, her ear pressed so hard against his shoulder that it should have left a mark.

He carried her as far as the next alleyway, shivering and damp and still too numb with the near-panic of falling that she couldn't wish him away. When they were back in the half-dark of the leaning building, Trip slipped from his grasp and he let her down gently, as if he realized her legs were just about to give way.

They sat long enough for her to catch her breath, once she realized she'd lost it. The sky was slowly growing brighter, barely noticeable every time she glanced up and out of the alley, past the bend of Monkey's head where he crouched over her. She pressed her cheek against his arm, where it hooked over her shoulder and held her steady, until the fine layer of mist that had settled on both of them began to evaporate.

When her breath stopped hitching quite so hard, he pulled back to get a look at her. "You okay?"

She hissed a lungful of air out in response.

"Trip?"

"Yeah" she said, whisper-thin. "I'm okay."

Monkey ducked his head to look at her, like he was hearing the lie, and she had to look past his face. He couldn't be here, and the sight of him was a tangle of emotions, and she couldn't identify a single one of them.

He reached up to touch her head, but she moved away, and his fingers skimmed air.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing."

Trip pushed off the ground, her back sliding up against the cold metal plates. "What are you doing here?"

"Exactly what it looks like."

"It's not safe—you can't be here." She scrubbed her hands, raw and tattered and blood-coated, over her pants, as if that would help. "You shouldn't have come."

"Well," he said. "You're welcome anyway."

"Yeah, well," she muttered, and had no idea what that was supposed to mean. "What's the alarm? Did they see you?"

"I dunno. Geoff said Wren set off the first one. I have no idea about the rest."

"Geoff? Is he the reason you're here?" she asked, and Monkey just shrugged. "I'm going to _kill_ him."

She was walking suddenly, without remembering when she put motion behind it. He stayed close behind, warmth pouring off him like water. He reached out to stop her, but she jerked her arm away. "Where are you going now?" he asked.

"I have to warn them."

"Warn who? About what?"

She hadn't quite gotten to that part yet, and some small bit of her was grateful when the siren changed. It spun into a slow, repeating loop that meant a mech attack, or something worse. There were no mechs, not like the ones that would need carefully planned chaos like this, and she already knew what the alarm was really being used for. There was too much light in the watchtowers, too much activity everywhere.

And Monkey, behind her, was oversized for the open street, or at least he was too visible, and totally uninterested in the fact.

"They know you're here," she said, and could not put enough panic into it. "They have to."

"So? Let them. We're leaving anyway."

Trip willed her databand to appear on her arm, harder than she'd been doing in the past few hours, but it still didn't work. She listened to the siren pattern again, her head tilted. "They're doing a sweep from each watchtower. They're going to come here eventually, and they're going to find you."

Monkey waited for the part that was meant to impress him.

"Do you have any idea what they'll do to you, if they find you?" she asked.

Monkey raised his eyebrows, just enough for her to feel a bright flash of anger.

"They'll _kill_ you," she said.

"Huh," Monkey snorted softly. "They'll try."

She pictured it without even trying, Monkey going after the people like they were mechs, tearing weaponry out of their hands—maybe their whole arms, if they snapped off easy enough.

"You're not fighting the townspeople," Trip said.

Monkey was silent.

"_Monkey_!"

"I didn't say anything."

"They're just people," she said, like that was supposed to mean something. "They don't...know any better."

Her head throbbed suddenly, and when she lifted her hand to the lump on the side of her skull, the band flashed in the faint light and Monkey's eye went to it.

"The hell is that?" he asked, as she turned away too late. "Is that a slaver band?"

He moved to grab at it, like he could crush it from her, but Trip backed away.

"The hell does it do?" he demanded.

She shook her head. "Nothing now, but I need my databand to get it off."

"Can't we just—"

He made a swift twisting motion with his hands, like breaking it in half for her, and she winced. "I don't think so. And my EMP's gone, I don't know where."

It was worse, almost, now that Monkey was here. She felt raw terror under her skin, a paranoid buzz she never thought she'd need to feel here, not in her own city. The shadows were too thick, too deep and complicated, they could have tucked anything at all away in the alleys.

"You have to leave," she said. "He's going to do something, and everyone thinks you took those kids. I don't know where Jason is, he's _furious _and—"

Monkey's hand came down to rest on her shoulder, but she pulled forward, and felt his fingers trail for a second before dropping away.

"_No_," she said. "You have to leave."

"Trip, stop."

"I have to warn them," she said, intentionally overriding him.

"Warn _who_?" he asked again.

"I don't know," Trip said. "But he said he needs the town, and...I don't know what for. He went on and on about Pyramid, and the enslaved. What would he need the town _for_?"

"You're asking me?"

She looked at the city, trying to conjure up whatever Jason saw in it that wasn't obvious, but couldn't imagine.

"You know what?" Monkey said. "Let him have it. Let's just go."

"What?"

He shuffled, brushing some energy off his shoulders down to his feet, all in one wave that she was surprised she caught at all.

"Forget them," he said. "If he wants the city, let him have it. It's been nothing but trouble since the start."

Trip bristled. "How can— _No_! I'm not leaving them! I have to stop this before it gets any worse!"

She stopped for a second, because the sirens were louder now, screaming to call Monkey out into the open, to bring every single person in the city crashing down on them, with pitchforks and fire and heaven knew what else. There was distant shouting, just scraps of it that tickled her ears, but it was real, and it was getting closer.

"You know," Monkey said, infuriatingly calm, "I think it's already worse."

Trip's ears burned. "I can _do_ this."

"You've already done enough for them. And this—" He indicated the side of her head. "This? Who did this to you, huh?"

The truth was bad enough, so she kept it to herself. "I'm not leaving them."

"Tough, because I'm not leaving without you."

"_Tough_," she threw back. "_I'm_ not going anywhere!"

They were too loud, and she knew it. The sound of their voices collided with the walls, the overturned crates, everything, and sent the noise back at them, warped but still furious.

"Please," she said, and the word was barely civil. "I didn't want you to come. It's not safe."

Monkey dug his fingers into the back of his neck. "I can take care of myself. And you—"

"I was doing fine!"

"You almost fell off a cliff!"

Trip hissed, like she'd punctured something. "Yeah, well, I didn't have a choice! He thinks it's all my fault, you know? For destroying Pyramid?"

"How can he _blame_ anyone for that?" Monkey asked.

"And he thinks he can fix it. He wants me to _help_ him fix it."

"So he's nuts. So what?" Monkey said. "You're going to let this thing kill you, and it's not worth it. You already almost did once. Getting to Pyramid almost killed us—"

"It did kill one of us," she said, and Monkey was kind enough to quiet, slightly, remembering Pigsy.

"And it's enough," he finished. "Leave them. Leave all of it."

Trip almost wanted to, at the very edges of all the things she wanted. But leaving Jason here, in charge of everyone, was like bringing them from one wolf to another, and she couldn't.

"Then _you_ leave," she said. "I told you not to come, didn't I?"

"Yeah. Good call on that one."

If she hadn't caught him looking at her rock-slashed palms, his eyebrows drawn so tight the tension rippled through him, she would have been furious. She cupped one hand in the other and turned away.

"This place is a disaster," Monkey said. "Trip, come on. Walk away."

"Just_ leave_," she said, and her voice broke and wobbled stupidly on her. "They'll kill you if you stay, and I can't—" She opened and closed her fists, and felt blood sticky in them.

Monkey moved between her and the nearest light, as if his shadow were enough cover. "I'll leave, but not without you."

"Why won't you just _listen_?"

"_Why won't you?_" he roared, and she opened her mouth without any words for it to use.

They were way too loud, way beyond any attempt at sneaking, and they both heard the buzz, uneven and discordant against the sirens, immediately bearing down on them.

Monkey tilted his head up, twisting his ear to the source of the noise. Trip tried, but couldn't pinpoint whatever he did, and she stumbled back as he suddenly dove at her.

They tumbled into the shadows, and Monkey pressed his hand over her mouth, a little harder than he probably meant to.

He didn't move for a full minute, curled over her to shield her from sight, as if she'd be the one they were looking for. She could feel how his heart skipped up a few notches above what must have been normal for him, but still so much slower than the hammering in Trip's chest. He didn't look at her, but lifted a finger, just one, when she tried to speak against his palm.

"What?" she asked, when he removed his hand.

"Dragonfly," he said quietly, and it took a moment to understand that he didn't mean her.

The noise of them was still distant, but one or two had made it this far already, and buzzed overhead, their lenses fixing on the few bright spots and carrying past.

"Damn it," she said, for both of them. "Mark. Or Jason. Or anyone."

It was strange to think that the dragonfly was hunting them, diving toward the shadows and lifting again when it didn't find anything of value. Finally, it flickered off west, toward the building where Trip had been.

"Let's go," Monkey said. "We're done."

He unfolded and stood, and held a hand out to her. She pushed it away and stood on her own. "Are you going to drag me?" she asked.

Monkey's face was shadowed, but she saw heaviness on him that pulled him inward. "Do I need to?"

"If you aren't willing to help them, that's fine, and you can go back to the canyon or wherever." She sounded cold, and hated it, but Monkey only watched. "But I'm not leaving."

He considered her for a long time, looking at the lump on the side of her head, and the wound to the cheek, and the dozen other things she'd earned in the past weeks. He held all these things in his eyes somehow, like he could tally how much effort she'd already put into it.

She started walking again, careful to listen for the dragonfly wings this time.

"What if this Jason guy comes back?" Monkey asked from behind her.

Trip tugged at the band on her arm. "I'll be careful. If I can just find someone else before he finds me..."

"Trip, come on. This is stupid."

She swallowed back something poisonous that she didn't mean, not to him, and would undoubtedly regret later. "I'm stupid, then. And you need to go."

For a second, she thought he agreed, because she stopped hearing his footsteps. She tried to gauge the direction of the alarms, and the search parties already going out, and where Jason was most likely to come from. When she turned, Monkey was back at her side, his face resigned.

"I don't like it," he said, twisting his hands in their gauntlets. "They don't deserve this."

"It's my town," Trip said quietly. "It's Dad's. I'm not—I'm not leaving them. Not with him here."

Monkey took a deep breath. "Fine. Explain it to me."

"Explain what? You know this is the last place my dad...he..."

Monkey looked at her, sad. "No, what's been going on here. Explain to me this Jason guy, and what the hell he thinks he's doing."

"I already did."

He waited, expectantly, and she tried to consolidate the bits of rambling she'd given him in the last few minutes. "...Fine."

"Fine," he echoed, and stepped aside to let her go. "And start from the beginning."

* * *

><p>It was getting harder to trick the gates into letting her through as the lockdown spread. Without her databand, she had to do everything the old way, by guessing the admin codes, or forcing the gate into diagnostics, or whatever she could think of. It took time, and the sky was getting too bright for them to be safe out in the open much longer. The sound of voices was never far off, seething just streets away no matter where they were, and it felt like they were making a giant loop around the perimeter of the city without ever getting closer to the center.<p>

Monkey stayed nearby but was rarely on the ground next to her. He followed along the buildings, scrambling up to the rooftops when he could. But he was back at her side each time she had to duck out of sight from the searchlights, as if he'd never been more than a few feet away, and they'd wait, hyper-sensitive and scarcely daring to breathe, until it diverted.

As they went, she explained everything, as best she could remember it all. She didn't linger on finding Neil, or Marla's story about their town. But she did look at him when she told him about the meeting, and the photos of him with the dying boy, to see what he did. Monkey didn't say anything then, but his eyes narrowed on something Trip didn't think was actually there, and he kept to the rooftops for a good ways, longer than he should have.

At some point, he started knocking the dragonflies right out of the air when they got too close, and they exploded in a burst of metal and springs and glass.

"I'm not sure that's helping," Trip said, as the fourth shower of sparks rained down, dangerously close to her. "They're going to realize all the dragonflies they send this way aren't coming back."

"It's making me feel better," Monkey said, but when the next one came by, he let it pass.

When she ran out of things to tell him, she sighed and tapped the band on her arm with a fingernail. "So, I guess that's all I know."

They walked to the next gate while she waited for him to respond, and she suddenly realized that they'd stopped hearing the sirens a long time ago.

"What do you think Jason wants?" she asked, when Monkey had no immediate opinion on the whole mess.

"He wants to blame you for something someone should have done a long time ago," Monkey said. "He's insane."

Trip thought Jason was a lot of things, but insanity didn't quite fit.

"But what do you think he wants with the town?" she asked. "He said he didn't want the tech...and I don't think he does. We don't have much other than that."

Monkey shrugged, and hovered over her as she fought with the gate panel. "Don't know."

"We're no different from anywhere else," she said, and punched in a five when she wanted a two. "Damn it. I mean, even if he wanted power, we barely have enough to get by. There's nothing here. There's nothing special about us."

"The only special thing about this town is the enslaved," Monkey said. "And they're a pain in the ass anyway."

The gate was in a failsafe lockout, and Trip smacked the controls. "They're not a pain in...the..." Her fingers stilled over the buttons, and the thought trailed off.

He looked at her. "You can't get through?" he said, meaning the gate.

"What did you just say?" she said. "About the town?"

Monkey snorted. "The only special thing about your city is the enslaved. It's where they all come, isn't it?"

"The enslaved..."

It was the only thing special about Liberty. Jason had said it, back when he arrived. So had Harold and Sophie, on the road. Everyone knew it was where the enslaved went, where they found some kind of sanctuary.

"Monkey," she breathed. "How did I not— He doesn't want the _town_."

He peered up at the walls, like he was calculating them. "Then what does he want?"

"I think..." She swallowed. "I think he wants the enslaved."

"Jesus. For _what_?"

"I don't know. But...that has to be it. He has to _want_ them for something."

And as clearly as if he'd said it, she saw Monkey decide that if Jason wanted them, he could have them.

"What if he does something horrible to them?" she asked. "Don't you care about _anyone_ here?"

He looked at her, went to say something, and gave up on it.

"Fine," Trip said. She finally got the gate working, and it creaked open too loudly.

Monkey peered down the street, his fingers splayed and tense at his side. "Let's go."

The were jumping at the last shadows now, barely shadows at all in the pinky-new light that flooded the streets. She wasn't sure how much longer they'd be able to outmaneuver the search parties, or what would happen when they failed.

"Monkey," she said softly, and he was right back at her elbow. "He thinks he can see her again."

"You can't get things back that you lost," he said. "You'll die, chasing things like that."

She wondered what it would be worth to feel the warmth of a hug, even a virtual one, when her father was really dead and slumped over in the war room in her memory, with his recorded message still thrumming in her ears when she thought of him. Maybe it did work that way, and the a dream could overwrite the nightmare, even if the nightmare was real.

"I'd...want to see Dad," she said. "Even if it was just a dream...I sort of understand it. Don't you?"

"You feel bad for this guy?" he asked.

"No, just..." Trip tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn't look at her, or not for long. "There isn't anything you'd want to see again?"

"It's crazy," he said. "That's all."

"Wanting to see Dad again isn't crazy," Trip said quietly.

"That's not what I meant," Monkey said, but he sounded angry and almost embarassed, and he climbed too fast and too high up the next building.

They were out of sync, her footsteps suddenly lethargic and weighter than they should have been with the whole town after them. Monkey hurried on ahead of her, to look for search parties from vantage points where they couldn't see him in return. He hit the surfaces in a near-skid, a little unnatural and out of place on things that were metal instead of living, and it jolted her that she'd never recognized it before.

He moved a little tighter, in the city, like he wasn't sure how the surfaces would bear his weight. Each step was a kind of discovering strangeness, like he was uncomfortable all the time, even after a year. And Trip realized, without even trying, that she never saw him walk like that, not once, before they came back from Pyramid.

He hated the city, more than he'd ever let on, even when he was saying it to her face. Nothing held any interest, nothing begged tinkering and improvement the way it did for her. Nothing was worth building or protecting.

It was something to escape, like everything else.

He would his way back to her slowly, his hand drifting between the Cloud and the release on his staff, waiting for anything to fight.

"You should go," Trip said, slowly, when he was close enough.

He motioned at her to hurry up and follow, and she shook her head. "No, I meant—you. You should leave."

"I thought we did this already," he said, exasperated. "If I go, you're coming with me."

"Not that." She twisted her fingers around her armband. "Hey, Monkey..."

"Mm?"

"You've...always hated it here, haven't you?"

He didn't even hesitate. "It's your town, not mine," he said, but his voice was strange. "It was never my thing."

"No. I guess not."

The next dragonfly hissed overhead, its wings scissoring the air, and they fell back into shadows until it passed.

"They're going to find us," Monkey said. "We have to get moving."

Trip hung back. "It's not going to work," she said. "Even when Jason's gone...it's not going to work, is it? It was never going to work. And your six months were up a long time ago."

Monkey's eyes narrowed at the thin shriek of the siren, like he'd just remembered it. "Now's not really a good time."

"Now's the _only_ time," she said. "Before you get shot, and not after. You should just go."

Monkey made a visible effort not to say something rude about the chances of getting shot at all. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about—" She paused, tried to find a way that would make sense to him. "You never liked it here. You tried, I know you did. But this is my home, and...you can't stand being here."

They heard voices again, just a street over, and he was too focused on the sound of it to meet her gaze, or at least pretended to be.

She waited, for an impossibly long time that crammed itself into a few heartbeats, and Monkey finally wrestled himself away from the noise of the city and back to her. "Okay," he said carefully. "What's going on? We don't have much time."

"I could have helped, if you told me," she said.

He tipped his head, listening past her. "Trip, I don't think.—"

"Maybe I could have done something," she said, plowing ahead. "But there's always going to be stuff you aren't willing to tell me—and it's okay. No, it's okay. I get that."

Some kind of instinctive reaction passed through him, like he was already dodging gunfire. Then it bled out, evaporated into thin air.

"Look," he said, the closest to lost she ever saw him, "is this about the kid?"

"Not just that. Where you go at night, when you're here. And you didn't tell me about—" She wanted to reach out and touch his scars, where he'd been banded, to mean the voices after he'd been rewired. But her hand was dead weight at her side, and she looked away. "Yeah, about the boy, I guess. And little things. You never tell me anything, and that's always been okay."

Maybe it hadn't, or it had been okay for her, but not for the rest of them. But it was too late now.

He was ridiculous in a city, after all, trapped here simply because she had always wanted him to stay, and refused to believe that he shouldn't.

"But I think...it's enough," she said quietly. "You should leave. No matter what happens here, I want you to go."

The palms of her hands hurt, where she'd broken skin on sharp rocks and almost fallen, but she clamped them into fists at her sides. "And once I take care of this, I don't think— I don't think I need you around anymore."

His face went blank and sand-washed smooth, and she waited.

For several long seconds, he watched her, gauging her and the noises in the city, and his weight rolled through him.

"Monkey?" she asked. "I said—"

"Yeah," he said, too simply. "So that's it?"

Trip hadn't expected it to be that short, or that easy, and it stung. "Yeah," she said. "That's it."

And he was so quiet, so utterly nonreactive, that they didn't stand a chance of not hearing Wren's voice peal out into the street.

"Let go—let go of me!"

That kicked them apart, like the sound of her voice physically pushed them back into different hiding places along the street. Trip dodged behind an upturned crate, and Monkey vanished back into the alley.

"Let _go_ of me!" Wren said, and there were tears in her voice. "I don't know where he is!"

"You've caused enough trouble already," Jason said. "Shut up."

They came around the corner, visible through the tiny crack between the crates. Jason was heavier on his feet now, but his head was constantly moving, staying on everything at once.

Wren dangled from his hand, her arm already purple-black and bruised where he'd been clutching her. "Let _go_ of me!" she shrieked. "I didn't do anything wrong! Rose is mean!"

"You should have thought of that before you hit her," he said without looking at her, and dragged her along like a misbehaving pet. "Come on."

"_No_!"

She sank her heels into the ground, but Jason was stronger and taller, and he merely jerked her up kept going.

Wren stumbled and almost fell. "You're _hurting_ me!"

Trip watched Jason pause, Wren squirming and clawing at him, and consult something on his databand. There was a familiar, unnatural crackling noise that followed them, and Trip couldn't place it. It was almost like raw electricity, untethered and snatching at the air.

From the alley, Monkey pointed at Jason and mouthed the name, and Trip nodded reluctantly.

"You and your brother," Jason continued, apparently at Wren, "are exactly why Pyramid's schools were a good thing. Who on earth raised you? Raiders? The mechs?"

"Shut up! Let _go_ of me!"

Trip saw, just briefly, a flash of metal on Jason's shoulder, like something was looped there so he could carry it without occupying his hands.

Monkey hefted the staff to chest height, but Trip stepped forward first, out into the open, and Jason swiveled toward her.

"God _damn_ it," he said, and very nearly lost his grip on Wren in his surprise. "Are you just fucking _stupid_?"

"Let her go."

He held her up, forcing Wren on tiptoes. "She and her idiot brother let him back in—just let the bridges down and wreaked havoc on the security systems. If I hadn't—"

"Let her go," Trip said again, evenly, and heard Monkey climb the rear side of the building.

Jason let Wren back down, but he didn't release her arm.

His eyes were red-rimmed and slivered, half-mad from lack of sleep. He looked at Trip, then at her arm, still banded, and back to her face. "Where is he?" he asked, and could only mean Monkey.

Trip resisted the temptation to look up. "Not here."

Jason snorted softly and shrugged one shoulder. The slaver band slid down his arm into his hand, and Trip felt her body lock in place.

"Where did you get that?" she asked, ashamed to sound as scared as she suddenly felt. "What do you need it for?"

He was holding it too close to Wren, but didn't move to put it on her. She shied away from it, pulling hard in his grip without moving him.

Overhead, Trip heard Monkey slide along something, just a faint whisper of fabric on metal sheeting, and she swallowed.

"Wren," Trip said. "It's okay, sweetie. Just stay calm, okay?"

Jason practically choked. "I'm not going to hurt her. You know what kids were like, growing up in Pyramid's world? They had real educations, and homes, and families. Kids didn't have to be scared of raiders, or slavers, or mechs. Do you understand that?"

Wren went perfectly still, and stared up at him in horror.

"What are you going to do to them?" Trip asked carefully. It was impossible to know where Monkey was, or how he could get to Jason without letting him hurt Wren first.

"Nothing," Jason said. "When are you going to get that? I'm not going to _do_ anything to them."

"Then let Wren go."

The crackling noise was too loud to ignore, but Trip still couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

Wren twisted her head to look behind her, at something Trip couldn't see, and Jason didn't catch it.

"You can't see her again," Trip said, to keep him from looking. "You know that, right?"

Jason didn't answer, but he didn't turn away, either.

"Please," Trip said. "I know how much you must want to. I'd want to see my father, and—"

Jason began to laugh. It was a horrible, angry noise in the back of his throat, and there was so much scorn in it that Trip's face burned.

"Oh, fuck me," Jason said. "Oh God. You don't— That's incredible."

"Well, screw you, too," Trip said. "I was trying to say I understand."

"Sweetheart," he said, as if he were talking to Wren, "you should, better than most."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Before he could answer, Wren raised her leg as high as she could and slammed her foot into his instep.

Jason swore and released her, and Wren darted away. He reached out to grab at her again, but Monkey was suddenly there, squarely between them, and had the tip of the staff wedged up under Jason's chin.

Jason automatically went still, his hands lax at his sides, as the staff tapped meaningfully at the base of his throat.

"Right?" Monkey asked him, meaning any number of things.

Jason eyed him at the other end of the staff, and let Monkey push him back an inch. The staff was at full power, not that Monkey would need much of anything to crush Jason's throat from that position.

"Yeah," Jason said. "Right."

"Trip?" Monkey asked.

Wren hadn't gone far. She hovered near the wall, one hand clutched around her bruised arm. He gaze flicked from Monkey, to Trip, and just barely skimmed over Jason.

"Go home," Trip told her. "Run straight there, okay?"

"But—"

"Find your brother," Monkey said, without twisting to look at her. "And don't lose him. Got it?"

Wren stared at Monkey longer, and Trip thought that this was the first time he'd ever been truly dangerous in front of her, his arms tensed and pressing the tip of the staff dangerously close to cutting off Jason's breathing.

Wren considered Monkey for a few seconds, then narrowed her eyes at Jason in fury and took off.

When she was gone, Monkey looked to Trip for permission to remove Jason's head from his shoulders.

Trip pressed her lips together, and considered it longer than a decent person would have. "I just want him out of here," she decided. "Just...toss him back out into the wilderness. We're not killing him in cold blood."

"Trip—"

Killing Jason would be satisfying, more than she felt comfortable admitting. But leaving him dead in the street with his throat collapsed and Monkey's footprints all over wouldn't fix the mess they were already in.

"You're not killing him like this," she said. "It'll only make things worse."

The staff angled up, forcing Jason's head back, like Monkey could pop it from his shoulders as easily as he'd dismantle a mech.

"Monkey," Trip said. "Please."

"I heard you," he said, but the staff didn't give a hairsbreadth.

Jason looked at Monkey out of the corner of his eye, as best he could with his head tilted that far, and saw the scars. "Enslaved, huh?"

Monkey shifted. "Not like the rest of them, if you're asking."

"No," Jason said. "You were Trip's, if I remember right."

Trip bit back the urge to tell Monkey to go ahead, to do whatever the hell he wanted, and send Jason's head flying.

Jason smiled, but it twisted strangely at the edges. "You spent a lot of time in that headband."

"Not with Pyramid in my head," Monkey said. "Just Trip. And only when she needed me."

Jason looked thoughtful. "You know," he said, "it only takes a minute for the connection. The download is near-instantaneous."

Monkey pushed forward, bored. "I don't know why you're still talking."

"People hear birthday parties a lot," Jason said, and Trip scowled without recognition.

It must have meant something to Monkey, because his eyes widened for a heartbeat.

"What about you?" Jason asked, nearly conversational.

"Nothing," Monkey said. "Shut up."

"Nothing, huh?"

If possible, Jason's head cracked back farther as the staff went up. "I don't know what you're talking about," Monkey said. "And you're leaving."

"Hang on," Trip said, and Monkey eased the staff back an inch so Jason could talk. She cleared her throat. "You said Ben wasn't coming back. Why?"

Jason ignored her. "You don't have to live with it," he said, to Monkey. "You can always go back. You've seen it—you know."

The tip of the staff fell a good six inches, then snapped up into Jason's throat, and he reared back and retched.

Trip gasped in spite of herself. "Monkey!"

"Accident," he said, without bothering to make it sound like it had been one.

Jason wheezed horribly, half-bent like an old man until he could breathe properly. "It's _ours_!" he said, when he could speak again. "And you know it! They destroyed the world, and left us the dream one. It's ours. It's our inheritance. Anyone who was born after the war, at least they always had—"

"If you're about to say it's your birthright," Monkey said, "you can save it."

Jason might have wanted to say something else, but the staff was jammed up against his throat again.

"I'm sorry," Trip said. "I am. But she's gone. Everything's gone."

All at once, she realized they hadn't heard anything in a long time, not the sirens, and not any dragonflies, and the silence was scarier than it should have been. There was only the buzzing in the background, so close she could feel it along her skin, forcing an undercurrent in her hearing that made her uneasy.

"So that's your decision?" Jason asked, back to Trip. "You're not going to help them? You took all that away, and you refuse to atone for it?"

"There's nothing to atone for," Monkey said. "And you're not in a position to be asking her to do anything."

The buzzing noise intensified, much too close now not to be seen, and a horrible feeling cramped in Trip's stomach. "Monkey..."

"Then I'm sorry," Jason told him. "You could have stayed."

Monkey snorted. "Don't think—"

Jason ducked back, practically spring-loaded, and Monkey was caught off-guard. Jason's hand flipped around his back, and Trip saw, in an arc of blue-white light that followed his fingers, where the electrical noise had been coming from.

Her EMP was modded well beyond safe levels, sparking in Jason's hand and spitting jolts of electricity in the sweep of his arm.

"Monkey!" she shouted, and he saw it, too.

Monkey was fast, but Jason was light and rabbit-quick, and he jerked away as the staff came down. He swooped back up, fluid and too fast for Monkey to follow, and had the EMP out and cocked back in his hand before Monkey could turn.

"_Don't_—" Trip shouted, just as Jason slammed the EMP into Monkey's exposed side.

She thought she screamed, but didn't hear the noise it should have been making. All she heard was the jolt of electricity pass through Monkey, crackling along every inch of him until it found an exit into the earth below his feet. He went stock-still, his eyes wide and empty, and the staff dropped from his hands.

He hit the ground, knees first, and Trip was still screaming his name.

"Trip?" he asked, sounding worried and confused. "What?"

Jason stepped back, his free hand massaging his throat, and Trip almost went after him instead of to Monkey.

"I'm sorry," Jason said again. He tossed the dead EMP and flipped his databand open, like he was done with her. "I would have let you leave, if you asked."

Trip was already at Monkey's side. He was half-keeled, his hands pressed over his chest, in the general location of the important parts but not too sure about it. "Trip?" he asked again.

"Hang on, you're okay," Trip said, stupidly. He stared straight ahead, like he was blind, or deaf, or both. "Monkey? Can you hear me?"

"Yeah?" he asked, uncertain if that was the right answer, and it was the only word he got out.

When he fell, it was like a mountain going over, and the ground shook when he collapsed. She tore his hands away from his chest and pressed her head there, listening for his heartbeat. She found it, but it was wild and irregular, and her fingers dug into his tattoos.

"Trip," Jason said.

"Shut up," she snarled. "Shut the fuck up."

"Calm down—he'll live," Jason said. He coughed painfully, his hand wrapped around his near-broken throat. "I'd be surprised if he died that easily."

Trip's fingertips curled into Monkey's skin, like she could peel it from him and see everything underneath, to tell what was damaged.

"Trip," Jason said again, and she whirled on him.

He stood over her, the slaver band in one hand and his databand up and running near the other. "You can go. Take him, and get out."

She swallowed back tears and rage. "What, _now_ you're letting me go?"

Jason took her arm lightly, just above the band, and she was too numb to fight him. "Not without insurance."

* * *

><p>The cart was too small for him. It bounced along the dirt path with unforgiving jolts in every direction, and Trip had to cradle Monkey's head in her lap to keep it from cracking into anything. She kept a hand flat against his chest, feeling for each heartbeat to make sure there was always another following. It got better, the farther they went, but she bent her head to his chest every now and then, just to make sure.<p>

"You'll be fine if you don't come within a mile," Jason was saying, but she pushed the sound of his voice into the dirt being crushed under the cart's wheels.

"The components are linked," he said. "I guess you could look at it that way. So, if he comes too close to the perimeter, it'll hit yours."

The band on her arm was cool now, but she looked back at the city, a good three miles behind them, and swallowed hard.

"And if I come back instead?" she asked.

Jason looked back from the front of the cart, where the makeshift engine chugged idly, bearing them farther and farther into nowhere. Rose sat at his side, straight-backed and proud in her stupid, ugly floral-print dress.

"If I come back?" Trip insisted, but her voice sounded dead in her own ears.

"You already know," Jason said, almost scolding. "I just want you gone. Go...I don't know. Go build a hut together somewhere. Have a dozen little tree-climbers. I don't really care."

Trip's fingers wove through Monkey's hair, gently prying sections apart and pressing them together again. The slaver band almost fit back into his old scars, but not quite, and there would be new ones in the coming weeks. She tried not to look at it, but her eye kept coming back, and her fingertips wound patterns over his face, willing him to wake up faster.

"There might be a range, between your band and his," Jason said. "But I don't know that you're willing to risk it. Really, I'm counting on it."

Monkey stirred, and groaned something that was partly her name, partly completely inappropriate cursing, and Jason turned back around.

Trip bent over him. "Monkey?"

His eyes flickered for a few seconds, then opened, too wide. "Trip?" His eyes went warm, then cracked shut again as the pain hit. "Fuck—what...?"

"Easy," she said softly. "You okay? How do you feel?"

"Like I got rolled by the Leviathan," he said. "Did—shit, what happened?"

"That's..." She looked up, at the Rose and Jason's backs, and at the sprawling nothing all around them. "That's hard to explain."

"Okay," he said slowly, and tried to lift himself. He only made it a few inches before collapsing again. "What's wrong with my head?"

She pressed her fingers against the dip under his collarbone, stilling him. "Stay put for a second."

"Trip?" He looked up her then, seeming to realize his head was in her lap, and they were in a moving vehicle, and all of it was terribly wrong. "What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"Then why are you crying?"

The brakes screamed, tossing them both toward the front, and Jason jumped free of the cart before it was totally still.

"Come on," he said when Trip hesitated to take his hand. "Mark's already got the programming to upload to the perimeter, but we're far enough out. You'll be fine."

"Mark," she repeated, like the name was new to her.

"I can't imagine he ever wants to see you again. And I don't blame him."

Trip bent down and stroked Monkey's face, where the slaver band connected over his forehead. "Come on. I'll help you up, okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, but he sat up too fast and almost tumbled out of the cart.

He saw Jason as soon as he was upright, and almost lunged at him before Trip caught his arm. "Leave it," she said.

"What—_why_?"

She pointed with the tip of her chin, back at the cart. Monkey narrowed his eyes against the midday sun at Rose, who sat ramrod straight and smiled, oily and superior, a sidearm propped against he seat and trained on them.

"Better than you deserve," she said, and Trip knew full well she'd have preferred to kill them both if Jason hadn't somehow made it seem like a bad idea.

Monkey stood, and took an extra second to figure out the mechanics of it. "What happened to the kids?"

"Don't worry about them," Jason said. "Wren's young enough to teach."

He didn't mention Geoff, and Trip hoped it was because he hadn't even thought about him.

Rose clicked her tongue in dismissal and smoothed out her dress, but the gun was still shining bright in her hand.

"What did you promise Rose?" Trip asked. "I don't think she's ever held a gun in her life."

Jason looked at Trip, at Monkey, and shrugged. "You know her daughter isn't dead in her dreams, right?" he said, instead of answering.

He climbed back into the cart and kicked out a heavy bag that hit the ground with a prolonged rattling noise. "Here," he said, in explanation. "So you don't die the first day."

"What is it?" Trip asked.

"My gear," Monkey said, and she saw the shining edge of the Cloud in the mouth of the bag.

"Why?" Trip asked, but it was to Jason. "Why even bother?"

"Well, I'm not giving you a databand, of course. But here's all his stuff—I guess it might keep mechs off you for a while."

"_Why_?" she asked, and even Rose turned to hear the answer.

Jason shrugged. "Which part of it do you want to hear?"

"Why not just kill us now?" Trip asked, and ignored Monkey's obvious disapproval of asking at all.

"I don't know," Jason said slowly. "Maybe because it was the same chance I was given."

"What does that—" she started, but he stepped forward.

Monkey instinctively moved to intercept, but Jason was already there, and he merely reached out and softly flipped Trip's hair in front of her face.

"Good luck," he said, ridiculously sincere, and climbed back into the cart.

Rose looked up at him and smiled. She released the brake, and the cart began the shambling, too-fast trip back to the settlement.

"Fuck," Monkey said, at nothing and everything. He swayed slightly, still sensing something off-kilter in him. "Fucking pretty boy. He's insane."

The cart was leaving them behind quickly, and the cloud of dust that billowed out after it was high in the air, and soon Trip could barely see it at all.

"Trip?"

She pressed a hand to her hair, feeling where his touch had been, and fumbled with the memory of it.

"Trip?" Monkey asked again.

"I'm sorry," she said, because it was all she could say just yet.

"For what?" he asked, with immediate suspicion. "Why, what did you do?"

"Me?" she asked, still watching Jason grow smaller and smaller into the distance. "Maybe. I don't know. I don't _know_."

"_What_, Trip?"

She couldn't put it in words, not right in front of him, so she turned ever so slightly and pointed to her own forehead with a blood-caked finger. Monkey mimicked it, and his eyes went wide.

His hands were just finding the edges of the slaver band around his head, shining and heavy in the sunlight, when Trip had to look away again.


	15. Anywhere But Here

Interval: Left Behind

* * *

><p>The day the dragonfly arrived, she had just come up from the tunnels, and was out in the midday sun to listen to the waterfall and brush fresh cobwebs from her hair.<p>

It had taken three days to find the courage to come back at all, and the squat, ugly little building was quiet and empty when she did. It was almost embarrassing, considering how hard she'd run in the first place. She'd kept going for hours, with the ravine wall always on her left, until she couldn't tell which breath was in and which was out, and the stitch in her side was a kitchen knife under her ribs.

She didn't stop until she was sure the only footsteps were hers, and there hadn't been anyone following for a very long time. That first night, she slept under a pricker bush, in a gap between its lowest branches and the cool dirt that was enough for a skinny girl, but nothing else.

The next two days she spent being utterly, hopelessly lost. She was unbelievably hungry, and every mushroom or plant she passed looked appetizing, even the ones she was sure would knock her over dead. When she found a bush of honest-to-goodness blueberries, she ate so many that her stomach went wild at the intrusion, and she promptly threw it all back up. She sat for an hour after that, feeling sorry for herself.

So she came back for food, in the end. She thought maybe she could sneak in and grab a handful of protein bars before he saw her, but there hadn't been a need. The building was cold, and the rooms seemed emptier than they'd been when she raced through the first time. She slept against the front door the first few nights anyway, with a pointy bit of something or other in her hand. But he didn't come back, and after a while, she stopped thinking about it at all.

She found the tunnels by accident, when cold air slipped under the door in the back of the building, where it jutted right up against rock. She only went in a few steps the first day, because it was totally black as soon as she rounded the first corner, and she came back so fast that she banged her knee. She went farther the next day, and a tiny bit farther the day after that. The fourth day, she found, foot-first, an entire mound of rat droppings, and the rats to go with them, and the door to the tunnels stayed locked for a solid week.

It didn't stay locked forever, though she did make every attempt to avoid the rats after that. The tunnels weren't all that much taller than she was, and narrow, and too dark to see much beyond the cast of the hand lamp she found in the storeroom. They led out and up, under the ravine wall, but she couldn't decide if it was more dangerous to explore them, or to wait around for him to come back and find her still wondering.

In the end, the dragonfly made up her mind for her.

She was standing in the open area in front of the building, her arms out like a compass, gauging her estimate of north. Knowing it wouldn't have helped, since it was just one of the directions that could have meant anything, but it was usually a good idea to find north before finding anything else. She spun, as she changed her mind every few seconds about where she'd actually seen the sun rise that morning, and her arms swung out like coattails.

She wasn't used to hearing mechs, and she spent a long time just listening to the buzz before knowing what to look for. The dragonfly plummeted, like it planned to crash. She ducked on instinct, but it banked hard and missed her hair by inches, and sailed overhead again, looking for a place to land.

She heard its wings scissor the air, a little slow and drained, as the dragonfly circled.

"Hello?" she called, just in case, and the voice was squeaky and rusty and didn't sound right at all. "Can you hear me?"

The dragonfly only rose higher.

It didn't say much for her, to be ignored by the only living thing she'd seen in ages, even if it wasn't really living at all. "Hey! I am _talking_ to you!"

The dragonfly's lens tilted down at her for a second, then righted as it dove at the building, folded its wings in at the very last second, and vanished.

There was no shatter of glass or springs. She could barely see the open vent from her tiptoes, just big enough for a very small mech, and she ran back inside.

The dragonfly was in the control room. It settled on an upturned dock, and its lens snapped down to plug its neck into a pronged cable. She had never once seen the consoles do anything of interest, even the few times she felt brave enough to try to get into them, and this all seemed too automatic to interrupt.

Numbers scrolled across the vidscreens, too fast for her to track, as the dragonfly and the computer talked. She waited, partly because it was interesting, and partly because she wasn't sure whether it was safe to come close.

Finally, the dragonfly's lens flipped back up. The cable popped free, and the dragonfly tested its wings.

It took her a second to realize it was going to leave again. "Wait!"

The dragonfly's wings were beating hard already, and they snicked at her fingers when she tried to grab it. The dragonfly leapt into the air, batted around her head once, and zipped through the open vent.

"At least tell someone I'm here!" she called after it, and stuffed her wounded fingers in her mouth.

The stupid thing didn't even answer.

The console whirred at her side, and she turned to it with sudden butterflies in her stomach.

She read the message four times, and still didn't understand what it wanted from her. But there was a number at the bottom, slowly ticking down, from thirty to twenty-nine to twenty-eight as she watched, and the butterflies sank lower each time.

There was only one option, right below a lot of tiny print that didn't mean anything to her. It was the least-threatening thing on the display, and she paused for a second before pressing her thumb through it.

The numbers ticked down one more, to eighteen, and stopped. After a minute, the screen dimmed, and the console went back to sleep.

She pulled her fingers out of her mouth. "Well...same to you."

The butterflies weren't gone yet. The dragonfly was the first sign of life in a long time, and she wasn't sure it was a good thing. The consoles hadn't done a single interesting thing since she came back, and if they woke up because of a dragonfly, it might mean he was on his way here. Or someone worse was.

She went straight for the hand lamp, close enough to finishing its charge to get her twenty minutes into the main tunnel, and grabbed it off its dock. She pulled an oversized sweatshirt over her head, and had to roll the sleeves half a dozen times to keep sight of her hands.

She looked back at the consoles once before she left, but they were as quiet as they'd ever been, and there was no way of knowing what the dragonfly had come for at all.

The tunnels were a better bet than open land. Tunnels led somewhere, and she'd already gotten lost trying to find help in the ravine the first time. There was a countdown now, even if it was a frozen one, and she needed to get going.

The tunnels were barely warmer in the afternoon, but it was enough, and she pulled the door open and swung the lamp inside.

There were no rats, or not in the first ten feet, anyway, and she took a deep breath and went in.

* * *

><p>Fifteen: Anywhere But Here<p>

* * *

><p>For five or ten minutes, Monkey ranted in the direction the cart had taken. He threw every foul, horribly obscene word he could come up with on such short notice at the city, as if the guards could hear it from the watchtowers if they had their ears pointed in the right direction. He had barely let Trip finish getting him up to speed, in a voice that couldn't be hers, before he started shouting and stomping across the earth, back and forth. Every word of it had to fight past a new leaden feeling in his chest that took his breath too soon, and he paused between tirades for the next burst of energy.<p>

He might have gone on like that until he burned up all the air under the sky, if he hadn't looked to Trip.

As soon as he did, it all flipped off, mid-rant. Trip was curved away from him, just a hair forward. Her hands palmed her heart like he'd been hurling every word at her instead, and she was gathering them all to her, like a lead ball she intended to carry somewhere deep in her.

Monkey released the entire capacity of his lungs through his teeth. "Trip."

She didn't turn, didn't so much as lift her head, and he took another rattling breath. "Hey. You hear me?"

She peered at the city, what little of it they could still pretend to see, and gripped the band on her arm with forefinger and thumb. She was running some kind of calculations in her head without looking at him for reference, as if she could run fast enough to beat out the signal somehow, to keep it from tripping her band and back to his, if she only tried.

Monkey's fingers scoured at the slaver band, and he cursed again, this time at himself.

The band was heavier than he remembered. There was a dull ache to it, but he couldn't tell if that was from the fall or the band itself, but it felt just millimeters from being a vice around his skull.

It didn't patch Trip's voice into his head, or tell him that she was standing ten feet away, her own weight dead on her, but still alive and nearby. The band was useless, except for making sure they didn't get anywhere near the city. Mostly, he realized, it just itched.

"Trip," he said again, and her name came out more spoken language and less growl that time. "Look at me."

He was within feet of her without so much as a sideways glance, and he stepped around, to put himself directly between her and Liberty, and she finally blinked and looked up, her eyes flat.

"Say something, so I know it's you," he said.

Trip was rigid and wound too tight with a dozen things, with nothing to throw them at. "What do you want me to say?"

"Anything."

Her gaze went past his, right up to the slaver band, and snagged there.

"You know it's not your fault," he said. "Right?"

She was edging too close to the numb thing that paraded in her skin after Pyramid first came to the village, and her voice hit the air like it was running over sandpaper first. "I know that."

"You know exactly whose fault it is," he said. "Do you think he was bluffing?"

When she gnawed at the corner of her mouth, he jerked his thumb to the slaver band. "About these? You think it's all bullshit, and we can just go back?"

"No," she said, so quiet he had to bend his head to her. "I don't think he's bluffing."

"So how do we get them off?"

She stared right through him, like he wasn't solid. "We can't."

"What?"

Monkey put both hands on her shoulders, and she didn't move to shake him.

"Trip, how do we-"

"We can't," she said again. "I need my databand first, or something like it. And even then-"

"You did it last time," he said, because there was no way she'd forgotten how. "You can do it again, right?"

If that was a smile, he never wanted to see it on her face again. "I hacked the standard Pyramid programming. He custom-built mine, and probably yours. Even if I get a databand..."

"You can still do this. There's no way he's better than you," Monkey said, and her gaze skittered away. "Where can we get one for you?"

Trip stepped away. "I don't know. The databands aren't just lying around."

"What about the porker's?"

"Pigsy?" She spun in a slow circle, and her hair was a bright, matted streak against her temple that she didn't move to push away. "Maybe. Probably not. But-"

"We need somewhere to go," Monkey said. "We don't have any water, and we won't last long without it. We've got to spend the night somewhere, and we'll make it by nightfall. But we have to go now."

"What about you?"

He'd been bending down to his gear, but straightened. "What about me?"

"You..." She indicated her heart, with a small, circling sweep of her finger. "You okay?"

There was a tightness in his chest he wasn't used to, and he felt heavy and tired and sore and years and years older than he actually was, all of it new in the space of a few hours. And breathing was like drowning, every goddamn time.

"I'm fine," he said. "What about you?"

"I'm fine," she echoed, and lied just as badly as he had.

Her hand pressed tight over the band on her arm, and Monkey realized that she'd never been unable to go exactly where she wanted, except for those few minutes on the slaver ship. And she tore that right out of the sky.

"Come on," he said. "We can't stay here."

Trip took an uncertain step toward the cart tracks, and fell back, like she'd hit the boundary already.

"Trip, we have-"

"They're going to think I abandoned them," she said softly.

"Who?"

"Wren," she said. "Geoff. Graham. Marla. They're going to think we left them."

"Well, we'll come back," Monkey said. "And when we do, we'll put a slaver band on _him_ and see how he likes it." He stopped and thought about it. "Except...well. He might."

He upended the bag and spilled his gear out onto the dirt. The staff had a charge, and he snorted in surprise. Nothing seemed damaged or sabotaged, but he might not find out until the worst possible moment.

"I wish..." Trip said, half-whispering.

"There wasn't anything else you could have done," Monkey said, and it was all hot anger he meant for Jason, and not her. He paused and tried again, calmer. "Trip, you couldn't do anything different. We'll get back."

Her mouth was screwed up in a tight knot against her teeth. "I wish you hadn't come," she said.

Monkey clipped the Cloud to his belt. "It's a little late for that. Shitty way of thanking someone for a rescue, though."

"I sorry," she said. "I just didn't want..."

Her hand was still pressed over her heart, like she was trying to iron it, and the tremble was so faint in her fingers that Monkey couldn't tell if it was real.

"We need to go," Monkey said, before she could find whatever words she wanted. "Now."

Trip looked back to him, her eyes bright and heavy, and he knew full well what she would have said.

There was nothing else to take with them. Monkey checked everything he had, and it still didn't seem like enough.

"I won't see any mechs coming," Trip said, and clasped her naked arm, where she should have had her databand.

"We'll do it the old-fashioned way," he said. "We'll listen, and watch, and try not to make too much noise."

Trip shook her head, and nodded, and lurched forward into a walk, each step its own decision.

The Cloud would choke on dust and dirt too fast, so they had to walk, and find new strength for every single foot of it. He might have offered to carry her over the rougher parts, if he thought she'd let him. But she barely looked at anything but the ground, and only followed with half her attention, thinking on something so hard that he could almost hear it.

After a while, the city started to lose its stranglehold on him. It was finally behind them, like a mile of bad water, and they'd only just got land under their feet. Soon, every face there would dissolve into a sort of memory-smudged blur, more color than anything else. Given a few months, a year at the most, he'd remember every villager as every other villager.

But Trip stomped along, her head bent slightly, like the road deserved more consideration than it could possibly be worth. If she could, she'd imagine them all into safety at her side, until he'd blink and Wren and Geoff and everyone else materialized within reach, and she wouldn't have to pound each step into the dirt.

They walked for hours, making small adjustments along the way to avoid trouble before it could start, but always heading for Pigsy's, north-northwest.

After a long time, Monkey realized neither of them had spoken, not since they left sight of Liberty, and he couldn't tell if it was his silence or hers.

* * *

><p>She had half the weight of the wasteland in her shoes by the time they arrived, too close to nightfall for comfort, and Trip almost couldn't remember how the little boat even worked. She got them to Pigsy's, somehow, and Monkey immediately made some excuse about checking the perimeter a second time.<p>

He did pause when they thought about the range on the bands, but just for a second. He remembered the range well enough from last time, or at least said he did, and Trip swallowed something bitter in the back of her throat. Monkey was gone in a quick leap, and left her alone with the familiar clicks and whirs of the machines that had once been Pigsy's.

Her shoes were ruined, with more snarls and tears in the leather than she could recall having when they set out. The bike would have been nice, but she didn't think she wanted it, yet. Not if it meant coming right back to being so close to him that she could retrace his scars and tattoos from memory.

She sat for a long time, her thumb pressed into the ball of her foot, and listened for Monkey without hearing him.

There probably wouldn't be a databand. Pigsy was motors and machines, the bigger the better, and had had less of a head for the invisible side of it. Not that he couldn't, but he lived for scrap and rare finds, and not the code that made them all work they way they should. Trip looked anyway, because she had to.

She found twisted needle-nose pliers and bricks that doubled as hammers and a few dozen stripped screws. There were pieces-parts everywhere that Pigsy might have meant to turn into something, eventually, but were just lumps of shapeless metal now. Trip pushed them aside, sometimes with all her strength, and put them out of her head.

She emptied the workshops, and all the rooms in the place were workshops of one kind or another. Every drawer was junk at first glance, but had probably held some kind of careful cataloging for Pigsy. The bottom drawer held a half-eaten, long-dried-out scrap of pie crust, though, and Trip wondered.

Monkey was gone longer than he should have been, but it gave her enough time to turn everything inside out, from the cracked and leaning crates that propped up Pigsy's console to the piles of junk in closets that should have held more useful things, but didn't.

She heard Monkey climb something a little too roughly, and the metal scaffolding shrieked under his weight that he should have been carrying better. Trip grabbed at her band, without meaning to, but there was nothing yet.

For a moment, she just sat there in the middle of the main room, with nuts and screws and everything else evicted from their containers and cast out around her like a protective circle, and she pressed her fingers into her eyes until her vision went lacey with spots.

The consoles were up and running, somehow. They were only partly online, and she found half the cabling ripped open and lying haphazard around the place. She redid the ones she needed, and left the ones that would bring the auxiliary systems online. The first strains of music started up, but she hit mute as fast as they did, and the tunnels were silent again.

The console was much too old to be of any real use, but she tried patching to her arm band anyway, just to get a reading. She didn't dare make any changes, not with a system that looked like it would have had trouble running a toaster, but she could get a one-way feed going, and it was better than nothing.

The security was layers deep, and she could only access bits and pieces of the system. The base of it was Pyramid tech, but she could have guessed that much. The newer code on top of it was more interesting, and the entire structure was superimposed on the basic slaver band build. It was neat and elegant, as far as code went, and she saw a familiarity in it. She might have done something similar, if not the exact same thing in places, and it was unnerving..

The range wasn't what she was expecting, and she reread the specifications a few times, thinking. Pyramid bands kept slaves in close proximity to the ships. There wasn't anything like that here, but she couldn't tell how far the signal was still in effect, from Liberty. Jason had said a quarter mile, but that was what triggered the reaction back to the second band. There might be even more communication between the two. She could guess, but she wouldn't know how far was a safe distance for one person to be if the other went back. And that fear was exactly enough to keep them from trying.

There wasn't much else to find. The rest of it was closed off tight, and there weren't any obvious security holes. Even getting this far had been lucky, but it was like seeing it all through thick glass. There had to be a way to access it properly, but not with Pigsy's equipment, and even then she might need help.

She disconnected from her band, and listened for Monkey. He was still too far off to hear her, and she flipped Pigsy's console over to the radio system.

The receiver was still hooked up to the archaic datastore that helped him keep track of whatever was getting poured over the airwaves. There had been dozens of bulletins since he stopped being around to check, and she filed off the ones that were useless now, months-old warnings from Granville, about mech attacks and raider sightings.

She scrolled to the last of them and started working her way back up. There was nothing about Monkey, or Mark's warning, or anything like it. There was only the records of the children snatched over previous months, in minute-long audio files listed by transmission date. It was one thing, when they were nameless blips on her map. But to hear their names, in their parents' voices, tore at her until she dialled them down until she could barely hear it, and slowly worked her way back up to full volume.

By the time Monkey came back, she was at the last of the reports, or the first, coming backwards, and had just started to play it again when he thudded up to the door.

"-please, if anyone's seen h-" the speakers said, loud with static at the edges, and Trip snapped it off.

"Find what you need?" Monkey asked. The artificial light played havoc with his tattoos, and the red streak over his eyes was nearly a smear of blood when he turned his face the wrong way.

"No databand," she said. "If he had one, it's out on the grounds somewhere, and I don't know that we'll find it."

"Are you kidding?" he asked, and dropped his gear on the floor when she shook her head.

He looked at the whole place in one long swoop, as if he could expect to see something there she hadn't, then swore at it all and settled in the corner, with his back to the wall. Pigsy had enough to build a mountain out of scrap if he wanted, and no databand except one he might have been carrying, out to Pyramid, long scattered in the sand with the rest of the Leviathan.

"What about that?" he asked, and it took her a moment to realize he meant the console.

"Old interface. Even if I could access the input, there's no guarantee it'd respond to the standard commands, and if we set them off by accident..."

Monkey was staring at her, bleary-eyed and exhausted. "So, no, then."

"No. But I was able to read a bit from mine."

"And?"

Trip shrugged. "It's just like the way Pyramid used them. They're designed deliver focused shocks if we go against their programming. They draw energy mostly from us, from our body heat. So they'll never turn off, so long as we're still alive."

"What about the range?"

"It's-"

He wouldn't try going back, if it meant not knowing whether she'd get caught in the backlash. And she didn't trust her judgment this far, not if it meant thinking he was safe, miles off, and inadvertently activating his band. Jason was right, on both counts, and she hated him for it.

"It's not like last time," she said slowly. "I think-it won't shock us, just for being too far from each other. Did you get any feedback when you were out there?"

"No. And I got pretty close to what I think the edge would have been."

They sat for a moment, him on the floor, the staff propped up on his knee, and her perched in front of the console. Granville was four days off, at the most, and they could very well be looking for a murderer. Trip flipped the comm button on and off with her index finger, thinking. "I could always-"

"So where do we get you a databand?" he asked.

"It means you don't have to come, Monkey."

"Where do we get you a databand?"

She might not have made it by herself on foot, and maybe not at all. But it had to be said.

Monkey was still staring her down when she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "We have to get to Granville," she said, and he didn't look surprised in the slightest. "I need a databand at the very least. Maybe something more powerful, but it would be a good place to start."

Monkey tipped the staff up and against the wall at his side, within easy reach. "Figured. We'll get moving in the morning."

Trip thought she heard him sigh somewhere in it, but he yawned right after.

"I heard-" she said, and he squinted at her. "I heard the radio transmissions. This is where you found out about the kids, right?"

"Yeah."

"There aren't any new reports. And none about you."

"Why would there be any about me?"

"Well, the messages come from Granville, and-" She realized he didn't know, because she hadn't had time for that, in everything. "That photo Mark had? Of that boy?"

"Yeah," he said, and snarled at Mark's name.

"He was going to send it to Granville, so they could _handle_ it. He thought the photo was proof you were taking those kids."

Monkey scrubbed his fingers over his eyes. "I should have figured."

"So should I," Trip said, quietly.

The last audio clip was still onscreen, paused mid-word and pulsing near the play button. Trip exited it instead, and went back to the main list.

"How long did you know?" she asked.

Monkey yawned again, practically showing off all his teeth, front to back. "I didn't. The kid just showed up on my front door, almost dead. I should have known something was off about it. I did know - but I didn't do a damn thing about it. I didn't know Mark had a dragonfly out. Should have."

It wasn't what she'd meant, but it didn't matter. Monkey was in the narrow space between running out of steam and crashing, and processing language at all must have taken the last of it out of him.

"That must have been..." she said, and didn't have a word for it.

Monkey shrugged, lopsided and drained. "No worse than finding your whole town dead. I managed."

Trip hadn't been alone, but she didn't say as much.

"Why was...he like that? Was he sick?"

Monkey waited a second before answering. "There wasn't anything left in his head. He'd been wiped. Like the enslaved that didn't make it."

"Like the..." Trip swallowed, and regretting trying to remember. "What did you do?" she asked. "After the photo?"

Monkey let his eyes shut for a while. "I stayed, I guess," he said at last. "And buried him, later."

There wasn't anything to say to that, so Trip pressed her fingers against the console keyboard, hard enough to depress the keys but not enough to register anything onscreen.

Her hands were cracked and bleeding from where she'd hit the rocks, and she only realized it when she drew her fingers away and the keyboard glistened faintly. She scooped a piece of something out of her palm, and winced, and started picking scraps of dried blood off her skin.

"It seemed so personal for him," she said, working on her hand, and Monkey cracked an eye open at her. "I didn't understand why it was so important for him to hate you that much."

"Who, the bridge kid?"

The bridge kid, who never really had any ability for bridges at all. "How long did you know about Mark?"

"What about him?"

"That he..." She found a hard bit of stone lodged in her palm, and she thrust her fingernail under it, to avoid remembering the look on Mark's face as he bent toward her, hoping. "That Mark felt..."

Monkey half-surged up, like Mark was still in the room, and not miles and hours back. "Why? What did he do?"

"Nothing," she said. "I mean, he...offered to get me out. He said we could go, just us."

"That's it?"

She shrugged, and Monkey let the sudden energy flow back out of him, and then some. "How long did I know? Trip, everyone knew. Ben knew. Marla knew. Shit, even _Wren_ knew."

She might have blushed, weeks ago, but there was a deep, sick feeling in her stomach instead. "Why didn't I know it?"

Monkey's voice was tired and a little strange. "Can't tell you that."

"I should have, though. Shouldn't I? And why me?"

"Maybe because you were the first thing they saw when they woke up from Pyramid."

But he said it all wrong, because he'd been there, too, and no one followed Monkey around like that.

"Why _me_, though?" she asked again. "I never said anyth-"

He blinked at her heavily, trying to fix her in his vision. "Look, I'm beat. Do we have to do this now?"

"No."

"And you're sure we can't get the bands off now, right?"

"I'm sure."

"So let's get some sleep, and deal with this in the morning."

Exhaustion seemed wrong in Monkey, human and half again, so sure of his own strength that he could throw himself at a cliff face and catch her with one hand. But there were thumbprints of deep shadows under his eyes, and his gaze wasn't quite tracking her right.

"Okay," she said. "The security system's recalibrating, but it'll be up soon, so we don't need to keep watch."

"All right."

"And we should grab supplies in the morning," she said. "He'd have food sealed up. And he always had water on hand. We'll be okay."

"Great," Monkey said, but the word was almost a snore already.

She stayed at the console a little longer, playing with her ragged palm, until the screen dimmed in preparation to switch off. Jason already had a day on them, to do whatever he planned to do. Most of Liberty wouldn't need much convincing, not with her and Ben and everyone remotely sane gone. The worst of it was not knowing what the plans even were.

"I need to get to Granville," she said, largely to herself. "I need to find Ben, and tell him about...everything. None of it makes _sense_."

"Okay," Monkey said, although he couldn't have heard a word of it. "Whatever you want."

By the time she looked up at him, he was dead asleep, still sitting perfectly straight with his arms crossed over his chest.

It would have been easier to go outside, even if it the smell of swamp were stronger there, even if there were a dozen mechs primed and waiting for her to show up on their heat sensors. It must have been better than to watch him, and see the way his arms lifted and settled every time he breathed. He had never slept that deep on the road, even when she was on watch. But he was halfway dead here, like he'd outdone it way too badly, and had to come back up from nothing.

"Whatever I want," she repeated, considering it.

The bruises on him spread out, heavy and dark, from under his tattoos, like they were bleeding ink. They were both earning more scars than they needed.

"I want you anywhere else," she said slowly. "I wish you hadn't come back."

For a long time, the security system blipped over the area, checking and re-checking for threats without anything to report. Trip stood, and Monkey snored softly when the chair scraped back.

"You're going to get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that," she said, mostly to herself, and Monkey didn't stir.

She had to leave him, with his head tilted against his shoulder, to scavenge out someplace to sleep herself.

* * *

><p>It was easy to forget what true darkness was after so long in a city, with too many voices for it to ever be quiet, and tiny washes of light seeping out from under doorways and along the catwalks. There was always something to chip at the night, in Liberty. But the sky over the road was raw and unending black when the moon shuffled out of sight, and Trip felt like she might vanish in it until the clouds scraped by.<p>

They were making good time. Her feet were bundles of quills that stabbed up at her every time she moved, but Monkey kept going without complaint, and she did her best to follow. The road between them and Granville was blessedly free of mechs, almost unusually so. They avoided everything that even remotely looked like trouble, by finding quick ways to get around without being visible for too long, through weather-crushed rubble and pipelines that Trip would just as soon have avoided.

Making camp was a quiet, by-the-numbers affair, and they did it without needing to talk, or finding any other reason to. Monkey stopped fiddling with his band by the second day, like he hadn't gone a moment without it. But Trip's fingers were always working at her arm, until her nails left claw marks around the skin, and Monkey tugged her hand down when she was too preoccupied to realize she'd drawn blood.

They barely spoke, and only then to point out things the other might have missed, or to navigate a bit of road that was more fissures than pavement. Monkey helped her across them wordlessly, and Trip was always back on her feet in a matter of seconds, before she could even feel the scars on his back.

They passed things she'd never even known existed this close to Liberty. There were so many frozen Pyramid mechs that she lost count, and Monkey had assured her there were more, everywhere else. They were standing and leaning and sometimes mid-stride or mid-reach, and she shuddered to imagine walking into one, on the road at night, even if they were offline and no longer interested.

There was a downed slaver ship, too, so far off that it couldn't be anything but a streak of silver on the land. She almost wanted to head for it, but it was in the wrong direction, and there was no telling whether there would be anything functional onboard, or how badly it was damaged in the crash. She stared at it for a long time anyway, until Monkey called her name and they started moving again.

On the third night, so far north that nothing looked familiar anymore, they skirted around a wide, thinned-out forest, and made camp in the crumpled ruins at its edge. The few buildings still standing were gutted, with an almost human groaning in the foundations that forced them to make camp at a safe distance, even if it meant the lesser shelter of a half-wall of brick.

Building up the fire was more habit than need. The food in their packs were pre-cooked, tasteless emergency rations wrapped in sealed plastic that crackled horribly when they pried them open. But the fire was familiar and comfortable, and Monkey had one sparking before Trip had her pack on the ground.

Her hands were still fury-red and swollen, and she re-wrapped her palms every time they made camp. But she couldn't quite get them fitted right, and the bandages were too elastic and there weren't any nuts and bolts to hold things in place. Her work was always a tangled mess of gauze and pinkish ointment by morning, and Pigsy's medkit was starting to run low.

"We'll probably be able to see it by early afternoon," she said, and started peeling that day's sticky bandaging from her hands. "There's a radio tower, so we can follow that. And there should be these big, metal frameworks that cover the whole city. It's all walled off, though, but there has to be a gate, so we just have to figure out which side it's on."

"Okay," Monkey said.

"And I should probably go alone. We don't know if they got Mark's photos, and I'll go in first and let you know somehow."

The fire was fighting him, burning too fast through kindling and hesitating on the damper firewood. He poked at it, moved the heavier bits out of the way, and the fire got a foothold.

"I'll find Ben before anything else," Trip continued. "Someone there has to have seen him."

"What if he's not there?"

She was making a disaster of the bandaging again, pulling it too tight around her palms until her nerves buzzed. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"Didn't the pretty boy say something about Ben not coming back?"

"He was lying," Trip said. "He just wanted to make me feel like no one was coming for me."

Monkey stayed silent, and Trip squeezed what must have been the next-to-last drop of ointment into her hand.

"So what do you think he's planning?" he asked suddenly.

"Jason? He- I don't know. He's not stupid."

"Are we sure about that?"

The programming on the bands was scarily efficient and professional, but it wouldn't help Monkey to know. "He knows just as much about the city as I ever did, and he'd only been there for a few days. And..."

And he'd found a way to make a city of strangers fall in love with him, more than she'd ever managed.

"No, he's not stupid," she said. "And he has a plan for them, and I don't know what it is. They aren't _good_ for anything-"

Monkey's mouth twitched.

"-I mean they can't be..._used_, like that. They're people. How do they fit into it?"

"Think Ben'll know?"

Her first hand was done, more or less, and she started on the second. "I hope so. There's something not right about it. Ben might know. And Granville can help."

"Why would they do that?" His eyes were on the fire, orange and yellow jumping over his face.

"He killed Neil. He has to answer for that. And he's going to-do something. To everyone else."

"You think Granville's going to care about another settlement? Or the enslaved?"

"They can't all be freelifers," Trip said, but it was too quiet. "And Liberty needs help. All the enslaved do. I have to find help, and get back there."

"Back, huh," Monkey said, and it was barely a question.

He hefted a bit of firewood from their pile and tossed it right into the middle of the fire, and a wall of sparks and embers shot up between them.

When the flames died again, and the smoke wafted off, Monkey's face was blank.

"I grew up there, you know?" she said.

"Yeah, I know," he said blandly.

"No, you don't."

Her second hand was a mess, too, and the loops of bandaging draped over her fingers like tattered curtains, and Trip snatched at them.

"It's my home," she started again. "Everything I ever knew is there. Why do you keep looking at me like I'm an idiot for saying it?"

"I'm not looking at you like-" Monkey let it go, and lifted his ear to the breeze, listening. Trip mimicked it out of habit.

When he didn't hear anything unexpected, he shrugged some weariness out of his shoulders. "Home's not a place."

"For you," she said, sharper than she meant to. "You're always out here, on the road or wherever. It works for you. So once we get these off-"

"Trip, home's not a _place_," he repeated.

"I _heard_ you," she said, and clenched her fingers in her hand until the joints popped. "The road is, or..._freedom_ is. It just doesn't work for everyone."

She clenched her hands together, damp palms in, and let the fire do the talking for them for a few minutes.

"I know it seems stupid," she said, so soft that she barely heard it herself. "I know you can't understand. But I grew up there. Everyone knew me, and Dad. They knew where to find me, always. Even if I didn't want them to."

Monkey stoked the fire, but gentler this time, and without the rain of sparks.

Trip cleared her throat noiselessly. "Everyone knew us. My dad - they put him in charge when I was still a kid. He wasn't much older than I am now, but...he was so good at it. And when Mom died...everyone, the whole town, showed up at the house for him. Ben didn't leave his side for weeks."

"When was that?" Monkey asked.

"I was a kid," Trip said, and shrugged. "Seven or eight. There hadn't been any mech attacks in months, and she was out beyond the perimeter with another technician. They didn't have a chance to get back."

He didn't apologize, the way people try to for things that could never have been their fault, because he must have known exactly what that was like.

Trip pulled a jagged, empty shape in the dirt with her fingertip, to avoid looking at him. "I just wanted to explain it, about home. I know you don't get it, and I can't make you see it the way I do."

Monkey was watching the fire, instead of her, and the status light on his slaver band flickered back at it.

There wasn't any point. He needed open road like people needed sunlight. He'd live without it, but it would drain him, pull something raw and needed out of him until he was transparent and part ghost long before he had any business to be that way.

She drew a swirl in the dirt, from the bend of her knee, and out toward him.

"I'll take first watch," he said, too fast.

Her finger went still, mid-arc. "Okay. Wake me in a few hours?"

If Monkey answered, she didn't hear it. He built up soil and rocks around the edges of the fire, like always, and put his back against the rubble to keep an open eye on things. She didn't need to see him to know the pattern in it.

There was no noise at all that night, not from rodent-mechs lurking nearby, and no dragonflies bothered to investigate the fire. Trip could hear Monkey get up and move every now and then, to check the areas he couldn't see from where he was sitting, and settle back down again. But it was all familiar, complementary noise, and should have piled on top of her like blankets, and sent her under.

But the grass felt alien and sharp, and she kept thinking of other things to say to him, that might bridge the gap she'd been unable to fix before. But nothing came to mind, no matter how many times she came at it, and she spent an hour only pretending to sleep.

* * *

><p>There was a warm, heavy weight against her shoulder when she woke, and it shook at her until her bones rattled. "Trip, get up."<p>

It was still dark, she could tell even before she opened her eyes. When she did, the only light was only a scattershot of stars overhead, and the low moon.

She mumbled something, sleep-stupid, and Monkey pulled his hand away. "Get up. We have to go."

"What? Why, what is it?"

He didn't answer, and she was up and had nearly all her things herded neatly into her bag by the time he buried the fire.

"Mechs?" she asked, when he came back to her.

"I thought so, but... Come on."

He led her across the ruins, to the tallest structure on the western side. It had been a building once, but there was only one wall left, with an exposed metal staircase clinging doggedly to the side.

Monkey picked his way up the stairs, testing it for her, but Trip still followed a little more carefully.

When they reached the third floor, there was a gap where a window might have been, and they crouched on the metal platform to peer through.

"There," Monkey said.

He pointed, and how he could have seen anything in the darkness was a mystery.

"What are we looking at?" she asked.

"Just wait. I heard something."

Cloud shadows tumbled over the grass, like pits that opened and closed as they watched. Each one might have concealed movement, and Trip crouched, one hand flat against the jagged brickwork for balance. Monkey's fingers fiddled at the Cloud.

A minute passed, and Trip felt the adrenaline seep from her.

"It's gone now," she said quietly, and wiped the sleep from her eyes. "What was it?"

Monkey was about to say something, but lights swung up over the rise. They were headlights, narrow and uniform, and they bounced up over the hill as the vehicle made the rocky climb.

"Shi-" she whispered, and didn't bother to finish. "Who are they?"

Monkey shushed her, absent-mindedly, and she peered through the gap.

The vehicle bounded into sight, what little they could make out, and there was a flash of horizontal metal lines that Trip immediately recognized as the roll cage. The vehicle was open-backed and light, meant for terrain where they might not find roads.

"Raiders?" she asked, and was huddled a few inches lower.

"Never seen them with gear like that," Monkey said. "But stay down."

As they watched, a second set of headlights popped up near the first, then a third, and Trip had the strange feeling they were being hunted.

"I heard gunshots," Monkey said, as if reading her mind. "But...I swear I heard a mech, too."

"It's a patrol," she said. "They must have come from a settlement."

They both ducked as the first shot cracked the air, and the mech panther leapt high against the moonlight. It bucked in midair and twisted back, and its legs pedaled madly at nothing. The patrol vehicle swerved around, and there was a mad scattering of rocks and dirt.

"It must have gotten too close wherever they're from," Monkey said.

"They'd never chase it this far," Trip said. "They must have already been out here."

The vehicle made a close sweep, and the panther went after it blindly, gears screeching and no longer meshing properly, and missed by a yard.

"They've got it," Monkey said, and Trip leaned forward.

The next shot hit home, to tear through cabling and metal, and sparks billowed from the mech's shell. A man hollered something, too far away and turned from her, but it sounded triumphant.

"Granville," she said. "I don't know who else would have the resources. I don't know what they're doing out this far, though. They wouldn't waste all that power just to-"

She heard the next shot as clear as Monkey did, the one that shattered the panther's formatter board and sent it crashing, as if it were meant for him.

"Get down," he said sharply, and they crushed themselves flat against the stone as the searchlights swarmed over them, and passed.

The vehicles stopped at the panther, and the crew of uniformed men, half a dozen at least, poured out of the vehicles like stones hitting water.

"They're going to scrap it," Trip said. "God, I can't- Imagine being able to harvest mechs like that. I bet it's got a fuel cell somewhere in it. Not much-they probably burned more than what they got, but-"

Monkey was still crouched, watching them. "We have to go."

The patrol wasn't leaving. They huddled at the downed panther, their arms tilted out at a familiar parallel to the ground to show their databand displays.

If the window had been any lower, Trip might have tumbled out of it, trying snatch a databand off of one of them from this distance.

"Forget it," Monkey said. "As a general rule, I avoid people with guns."

She hadn't really been planning on launching herself from the staircase, because she could see the gun barrels as clearly as Monkey did. There might not be much difference to a patrol between a mech panther and a child killer, and Trip hissed faintly. "I wish we _knew_," she said. "We could walk right out there if they didn't get Mark's message."

"What're they doing?" Monkey asked.

"Huh? Scrapping it."

"No, that one."

He pointed, and Trip saw a slighter man hovering at the edge of the group, his databand up and glowing in their direction.

"He's running a scan," she said. "All that noise-if there's another mech nearby, it would come."

"More mechs," Monkey said, without enthusiasm. "We should go while we can." He looked down at the Cloud and scowled. "Nothing here to fly on. There wouldn't be."

The databand waved closer, and Trip's skin prickled. "They might listen," she said. "They _might_. I could try."

"Don't even think about it," Monkey said. "They'll shoot first. Men like that always do."

She looked at him. "They might listen if- If, um..." She stalled. "_Huh_."

The light on Monkey's slaver band pulsed and darted over his forehead. It repeated, faster, and flickered back and forth a few times.

"Huh," Trip said again.

"Huh what?"

The light shuddered, and Trip reached for the band on her arm. "They're scanning for mechs," she said slowly.

"Yeah, so?"

The man was still fifty yards off, but he was taking short, rapid-fire steps in their direction.

"Monkey," Trip said. "We're mechs."

Monkey twisted his head away from the patrol for a moment. "I'm sorry?"

The man peered at his databand, and up to where Trip and Monkey were crouched, as if he could see through brick.

"We're as good as!" Trip hissed. "We'll show up on their scans!"

The first shot went high, and wasn't really a shot at all. It pulsed overhead in a red bow, and Trip blinked dumbly into the flare.

"Are you fucking-" Monkey shouted, then pushed her forward. "Go! Get moving!"

She skittered down the first, tangled steps, and couldn't remember how they found a way up in the first place. She leaned away from the gap in the stairs, her hand instinctively reaching back for him.

He didn't even stop, but had her up and off the steps and hurtling toward the earth, and the first gunshots ricocheted off the wall where they'd been.

It was a long drop, and Monkey hit the ground in a roll, somehow absorbing most of it for them.

"Any bright ideas?" Monkey asked.

Trip stumbled to her feet. The forest was only thick in places, but there were scattered bits of debris and enough metal shells to throw off the signals.

"Too much noise for their scans in there," she said, and pointed.

The next gunshot buried itself in the dirt, much too close, and they both took off at a dead run, into the weave of tree trunks and stone.

They were fast, she had to give them that. Even in the forest, where the ground was collapsing and uneven, the patrol was sure-footed and gaining on them. Trip was winded already, and it was a struggle to keep any kind of distance between them. They might have stood a chance in thicker trees, if they climbed, but the branches were high and sickly, and no cover at all.

The next gunshot was exploratory at best, but still much too close. She swore she heard it strike tree bark and veered away from the noise.

"What exactly do they think they're hunting?" Monkey shouted. "Trigger-happy, useless-"

"Go!" Trip yelled back. "Go, go!"

It would have slowed them down for him to carry her, and it was harder to track two signals than one. But they were never more than an armslength from each other anyway, crashing through the forest in explosions of dirt and leaves, with the sound of boots close behind them.

"We have to hide somewhere!" Trip panted. "We can't just outrun them!"

One of them was faster than the rest, and he'd cut across the dip in the ground to catch up with them, and would have a clear shot in a matter of seconds. Trip banked hard, her feet twisting on crushed leaves.

The tree branches were getting lower, until she couldn't duck under them any more, and had to skirt around. The third time one almost caught her, she whirled to Monkey, and made a hooking motion with her arm, and pointed back.

"Got it," he said. "Keep running."

She tried, but blood smashed in her ears until there was a waterfall of it, and she couldn't get enough air. The run slowed to a trot, and she kept one hand on her side to keep anything from spilling out.

When she turned, she couldn't see Monkey anymore.

There was a loud crack, like bone on something unexpectedly solid, and the footsteps skidded. The rush of air wasn't anywhere close enough for her to feel it, but she could well imagine the man's chest emptying all in one go, and he crashed to the ground.

She only heard her footsteps after that, and Monkey appeared at her side noiselessly. "Told you to keep running," he said.

"I _am_. Please tell me you didn't kill him."

"Okay," Monkey said. He pushed something at her. "Here."

The databand was already spitting sparks, and the screen flickered wildly. But Monkey shoved it into her hands, and Trip stared at him. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Something smart," he said, and took her arm. "But we have to find a place to get out of sight. They're doing a sweep from the other side. Come on."

Trip flew, the first hundred feet. She tried to make sure her feet hit the ground every so often, but it was a near thing with Monkey doing all the work. "Where?"

"I saw a ridge," he said. "Overhang of rock, right over a drop. Enough to hide for a few minutes."

"And after that?"

Instead of answering, Monkey found the slope and hit it in a slide. Trip just barely kept from tumbling, but he had her full weight just as fast, and pulled her back under the loop of rock with him.

There was precious little space, and they seemed to take up most of it. What was left went to their packs, and the shadows just barely held it all.

For a few seconds, the air hiccuped in and out of her, and Trip swallowed what she hoped wasn't a bug. She couldn't see him, but Monkey was so close she would have put her elbow through him if she moved.

"All right?" Monkey asked.

"Yeah, I think so. You?"

"Yeah. Can you do anything with that?"

The databand was fried, or halfway there. She flipped it open and sparks flew at her face. "Maybe for a few seconds."

"Is that enough?"

She had to turn, to keep the databand light from shining back out. "Hold still for a second. I need to...this is shot to hell, Monkey."

"It wasn't exactly the first thing in my head."

The interface was hard to navigate, even if it weren't gutting every now and then like a candle in high wind. "Okay. Okay, it- He's the one who caught the signal, so- Okay. I'll push it back to them, point it at nothing."

"What?"

"Make them think it was a false alarm. Hang on."

The databand barely had enough life left in it to do that much. The first time she tried, the transmission failed. She had to get it clear of the rock, where at least it stood a chance of hitting the other bands with the signal.

The drop was right under the mouth of the den, and she realized they would have plummeted a good thirty feet if they hadn't dove in when they had.

She leaned out as far as she could, the databand straight out over nothingness, but the transmission failed again, and she simply didn't have enough arm to reach as far as she had to.

"How much more you need?" Monkey asked.

She tried to gauge, as best she could against the dark. "Six inches? Maybe a foot."

Monkey braced his feet on the rock, in the few places not sharp enough to cut, and gripped her free arm in both hands.

It was enough, barely, and she peered out over the drop. "Don't let go, okay?"

Monkey's fingers gripped tighter on her wrist.

She leaned out as far as she could, her nerves screaming along the length of her arm, and probably right into Monkey. She held the databand aloft, hit transmit, and the databand promptly sputtered blue-black smoke and died.

"Got it?" Monkey asked.

The databand was truly scrap now, and the smoke twisted up into the air. "I think so, but just let me-"

He didn't, because a voice shouted fifty feet back, and Monkey hauled her back under the rock.

"You guys getting this?" the man bellowed. "Anyone else getting readings all over the damn place now?"

"Yeah, mine's all fucked up."

"The hell were we chasing, then?"

The others grumbled, and Trip pressed close to Monkey.

"Oh, for-" one of them snarled. "Did _anyone_ see him?"

Trip felt her eyes go saucer-wide at that, but Monkey was still.

"No, just speedy over here. He said he scanned something."

"What? Heat signature or mech?"

"Didn't say."

The man swore, and it was a word Trip wasn't even sure she'd heard before. "We got too far out, chasing that stupid cat in the first place."

The footsteps smashed into the bramble, too close.

"Oi, dumbass!" The voice was almost where Monkey had disappeared, and no more than ten feet from them.

Trip bristled, but she heard a boot thump into someone's chest. "You gotta be kidding me. Did you run into a _tree_?"

The man who Monkey must have knocked down coughed, like shredding paper in his lungs. "What?"

"Tree. Big, naturey thing. Grows out of the fucking ground. You ran into one."

"It-it came out of nowhere."

"Yeah-_huh_. Did you see him?"

The man struggled to his feet. "No, I just-fuck, I followed the-" There was a rustling as he dove back to the ground and scattered leaves with his hands. "Where's my tech?"

"You lost it? Man, you are _screwed_."

Farther off, someone flipped off his databand, and the low how of the alarm died off. "He's not out here. He never was. All we keep finding are goddamn _mechs._"

"Dallas thinks he is."

"Then someone needs to tell Dallas to get out here, since it's all nice and cozy there, and we're busy chafing our goddamn-"

"'We'? You keep the rest of us outta your death wish."

Another voice, farther off, cut through. "Numbnuts! _All_ of you! The readings are faulty. We've been chasing goddamn blips all night. Pack up."

"Come on," the man said, and it felt like he was right over them, and Trip could have reached out and touched his boot if she tried. "Dumbass. Did you break a rib on a fucking _tree_?"

The footsteps moved off, in what seemed like the general direction of the vehicles, but Trip held still for another five minutes, counting her breathing, and Monkey's.

"I think they're gone," she said at last.

They had to be from Granville. There wasn't anywhere else they could have come from, not with tech like that.

Monkey was leaning forward, bowstring-tight, and Trip realized she'd sprawled back into the den when he yanked her in, and her hand was pressed flat on his chest for balance.

"I don't believe it," he said darkly, and it rumbled through her fingertips. "Who the _hell_ listens to Mark?"

"They wouldn't just search every square mile from here to Liberty," Trip said. "It's insanity."

"We're running into a lot of that lately."

Trip turned the ruined databand over, and chucked it out over the drop. It fluttered weak yellow-green on the way down, then disappeared.

"We'll-I'll-explain it, when I get there," she said. "I'll make them understand he's just...wrong. They're wrong."

"This is a bad idea," Monkey said. "We got chased enough by men with guns back at Liberty. We don't need it all over again."

She started to move, but her left hand was screaming in sudden pain, and the bandages she'd redone that morning were loose and hanging in ribbons. "I don't have a better idea. Do you?"

"You sure there isn't anywhere else we can get these things off?"

"No," she said. "Not near here, anyway. This is out best shot."

She was too close, and she started to shift her weight back to put some distance between them. "We didn't get too far off course," she said. "Granville's almost due north now. We'll get there by midday tomorrow, at the latest."

"You're going in alone, and those guys... It's a bad idea," he said again.

"Well, it's the only one I have. And we need to get these off."

She felt him suck in a lungful of air, so much of it that it actually lifted her, and she waited for the rest of the argument.

But it didn't come, and Monkey just let the breath go.

"Come on," Trip said. "We have to get moving."

Monkey didn't move for a second, and she couldn't get her balance to get away from him yet. She lifted her hand, but it grappled uselessly at empty air and landed palm-down on him again. Everything in her ached, right down into bone.

"Come on," she said wearily. "The sooner we go, the sooner we can get these off. You don't have to stick around Granville."

She fumbled for a flashlight from her pack with her free hand, and it blazed on just enough for her to see her way back onto the slope.

"You meant what you said, back there."

It wasn't quite a question, but not quite not, and Trip stopped. "Where?"

Monkey was so still he barely seemed to be breathing. "At Liberty."

There was so much at Liberty, but she knew what he meant, even from what little she could make out of his face in the indirect light.

"You keep talking about home," he said. "About that place like..."

He drummed his fingers on the rock at his side, and Trip flattened her tongue between her teeth.

"You're sure," he said at last. "Once we get these off, and take care of Jason-"

"I'm sure," she said. "You don't have to stick around anymore."

She had no idea what his expression meant, and she twisted the flashlight away. "I'm sorry," she said, as quiet as if the patrol was still overhead. "I guess I should have said it sooner. You could have been halfway anywhere by now."

Her hand was still on his chest, her fingers curled inward, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Come on," she said, when he stayed silent. "We've still got to get these off."

"Sure." It was barely his voice. "Let's get going."

"It'll be fine," she said. "Ben will know what to do, and we'll get these off and head right back and get rid of Jason."

"Jason," Monkey said, "has no idea what the hell he's in for."

"We'll have everything figured out tomorrow. We'll fix what he did, and everything'll be fine."

It didn't work, trying to reassure them both at the same time, and she knew it.

"Come on," she said, and cleared her throat. "Let's go."

Monkey didn't move, and she swung the flashlight toward him. "Monkey?"

Finally, he shifted back, so she had space to sit up without overbalancing, and Trip pulled her hand away.

When she did, half the bandage fell to shreds, and she left a palm-shaped bloodstain on him, dark as the open night sky.


	16. Tinderbox

Sixteen: Tinderbox

* * *

><p>Granville had been so big in her mind already, swelled by stories that people brought with them to Liberty. Not as big as the Old City, because nothing was that size anymore, and probably never would be again. But Granville was supposed to be biggest thing for a hundred miles, constructed from whatever debris they could scavenge in any direction. They said that the people who built it harvested everything, like the city had developed a magnetic force that pulled every scrap of metal to it, leaving the surrounding land empty and raided.<p>

In person, Granville was even more than that. The city itself was fifty times the size of Liberty, pieced together in clumps of metal that had been balled up from a thousand places and welded together. The radio tower rose up squarely from the center, and the buildings were never more than a quarter its height. The tower was a random, piecemeal thing that was just as haphazard as anything else, but looked like it would outlast the city, given enough time.

Even from a distance, Granville was too big to take in all at once, and Trip found herself twisting her head left and right, to consider it out of the corners of her eyes, and Monkey more or less did the same.

They hadn't gone back to sleep after the patrol came through, and hadn't even tried to make camp again. They stayed hidden for an hour, waiting for another sweep of headlights or burst of shouting, well into the hours just before sunrise. As soon as there was light to see by, they started walking again, listening so hard for tires squealing that Trip's ears pulsed with imagined noise. It could have been because of that that they didn't talk, but the silence should have been comfortable, but was heavy and tired instead, like an illness.

They stuck to the forest, as far north as it would carry them. When they finally did leave it, mid-morning, there was the radio tower on the horizon, waiting, tall enough to stab the clouds.

They followed the broken highway, torn up out of the ground in places to lie in slabs that pointed skyward. Closer to the city, there was a bundle of concrete where an overpass had collapsed and created a neat hiding place away from the sun, and Trip and Monkey stopped there to rest.

The longer she looked, the more details she saw in the city, like every inch of it had been thought out differently. The only common element was the barrier, ten feet deep if anything, that circled the city in a protective field of mech shells and vehicle frames, and the starboard plating from an airship.

"More like a fortress than a city," Monkey said at last, gruffly, and Trip had to agree.

The main gate was easily twenty feet wide, painted harsh red and white, and even from that distance they looked like blast doors. There were tire tracks leading that way, and narrower paths that veered off toward the right, where there was a smaller gate, meant for foot traffic. But even that was flanked by watchtowers and wire.

"There," Trip said, as evenly as she could. "That's the entrance."

Monkey ticked off the watchtowers on his fingers. "Not too warm, though."

The city looked like a mech itself, sharp and solid and unwelcome, and Trip fought down something that felt alarmingly like doubt. "We've got watchtowers, too. And it keeps them safe. Maybe, if we'd had something like that..."

"Maybe," Monkey said, but didn't sound sure.

They stared in silence at the city for a long time, like they expected it to pick itself up and do something. The pocket under the overpass was a good place to see the city without being seen themselves, but the more they looked at it, the less certain it seemed.

"I'll find Ben before anything else," Trip said. "Someone had to know where he is, and he can help me convince whoever's in charge that they're looking for the wrong person."

Monkey made a low, noncommittal noise, and Trip eased her pack over her aching shoulder.

Pigsy's medkit was almost empty, and the coil of gauze rolled to the side when she flipped it open. "I'll be in and out in a few hours."

"Yeah," Monkey grunted.

She settled against a piece of overturned concrete, more or less the right height to sit and look at her hands.

Monkey peered through the slit in the concrete slabs for another minute, then turned slowly.

"What's up?" she asked.

He walked past her. "You hear that?"

She listened intently, and heard the faint, squealing whine that he was following. "Yeah, what is it?"

She set the medkit back down and followed him farther under the rubble, where the biggest slab had slammed into the road beneath and punched clear through. Monkey stopped where she could barely see him, where the shadows were thick and uniform. She knelt next to him, and put her hand out into the cool air. "There's something under here," she said. "Maintenance tunnels or something."

Monkey grunted and went for his flashlight, and was back before her the chill could seep into her clothes. "Move a sec," he said, and shone the flashlight beam past her.

The drop was steep, with a few chunks of concrete scattered on the way down. Trip was still calculating how far the floor of the tunnel might be when Monkey stood, tightened his gauntlets, and dropped through the gap.

"Monkey!"

He hit the ground a split second later, in a cloud of dust and splintered rocks that rose up through the opening, right into Trip's face.

She was still wiping at her eyes when Monkey started swinging the flashlight beam around.

"Huh," he said, at something she couldn't see.

Trip craned her neck. "What is it?"

It was too dark to make out anything beyond the flashlight beam, and Monkey swung it too fast for her to follow. "It's old," he said. "Might come all the way from the city."

Trip flattened against the ground and watched Monkey spin slowly, to flicker light over everything. "Don't come down," he said.

She tried to think of all the things she'd rather do than cast herself down a dark hole. As the light danced across the tunnel, Trip saw a control panel flash by, old and rusted. "It's definitely not used anymore," she said. "I wonder how far it goes."

"Right into Granville, if we're lucky," Monkey said. "Hang on, I'm going ahead."

"We're not going into— Monkey!"

He was already too far off, the flashlight bouncing ahead of him and startling the shadows out of the way, and Trip sighed.

When he didn't come back after a minute, she pushed herself up, surprised at how much effort that took, and went back to the medkit she'd left on the block.

She opened and closed her hands slowly, feeling heat and sticky-warm blood in them. The bandages were the same as they were last night, and she gazed at her right hand for a while, thinking about how long it had taken Monkey to chip the blood from his skin, since there was no water to waste. He hadn't said anything about it, just cleared it from him like it was all business as usual, and Trip tugged at her armband.

She started to pick the gauze from her hands, slow and thoughtful, and let it fall in shreds to the ground.

"It keeps going," Monkey said, back at her side without warning, and she would have leapt out of her skin if she'd had the energy. "I checked a good ways in. Can't see too far, but the air is moving, so it has to open up somewhere."

"It might veer back that way," Trip said, and indicated the rest of the road.

Monkey gazed at Granville, his lip curled. "Cities like that have as much going on under them as they do above. My bet is it goes right in."

He was probably right, but Trip kept her head bent, prying at her hands and trying to tell bandages from skin before tugging. "It might," she said. "But I'm using the front door."

"You're what? Trip, you can't—"

"There are footpaths," she said briskly, and ignored the way his hand flexed at his side. "They lead right up to the front door. It's how everyone goes in, and that's the way I'm going."

"We can both get in this way," he said. "You don't have to go in alone."

"You saying I can't?"

In periphery, she saw him lean back, like she'd pushed him. "When the hell did I say that?"

She kept at her hands doggedly, even though she couldn't tell if she was tearing gauze or flesh from her palms at this point. She'd know when she saw bone.

"Look," she said, "it's the easiest way in, and it's fastest. I have to find Ben."

"Twelve hours ago, they were shooting at us."

"They didn't know what they were shooting at. They thought we were mechs."

"They knew full well," Monkey said, and went back to the crack between slabs. "Those watchtowers are armed, Trip. You can see it from here."

She didn't want to see, and didn't get up.

Monkey flipped at the safety catch on his staff, off, and on, and back off again. "Do you even know what's in there?"

"Do you even know what's in the tunnel?" she asked. "It could be flooded, or it could be caved in halfway down. It could be _anything_."

Monkey didn't answer, but he stopped flicking at the staff.

Trip was having more trouble than usual with her hands, and she had them half a foot from her face without seeming to have any more luck with it. Her fingers were starting to slip on the bandaging that clung to her skin, before she pried them loose and they fell to the ground like cobwebs. Her muscles started to feel wrong and disconnected, and her nerves buzzed with static.

"Look," Monkey said. "If the pretty boy said Ben wasn't coming back, maybe there's a reason. Maybe the city itself is a trap."

"Then I'll find out when I get there," Trip said blithely. "No matter what, I'm going, and I need you to stop—"

When she looked up, he was watching too close, his eyes dark.

"I just need you to stop," she finished. "Okay? Let me do this."

"Shit," Monkey said, as if that was a response at all. "It's insane."

"It'll be fine," Trip said. "They're not looking for me, after all."

Monkey stood at the gap to the outside for a long time, without saying anything.

She looked up at him every now and then, and saw him shift his weight, rolling to each side with it and coming back to center. He glowered at the city like he could tear it down from sheer force of will, and Ben would be standing clear and unhidden right in the center, and they could carry him off.

Trip misjudged something in her palm and tugged too hard, and hissed under her breath.

"Let me see that." Monkey left the gap and started to reach for her hand, but she pulled away.

"I got it," Trip said. "I've been taking care of it since we left."

"Yeah, and I've been watching. Let me see."

Everything hurt too much to argue for long, and Trip set her hand, limp and throbbing, into his. "I don't usually have to do this stuff," she said, in explanation. "Ben's always been around. But I think it's...getting better now."

"_Jesus_, Trip," Monkey said anyway, and sat next to her. "The hell is— You can't let this stuff go bad."

"It's not like I planned on it," she said. "And we haven't had time."

She suddenly saw her hands like he must have, and saw them ragged and flayed with wet skin, with gauze packed in tight bunches in between.

"Shit, okay," Monkey said. "You got any water left?"

"Not much."

He ended up flipping the cap on his own canteen, and dumping the rest of the water over his hands until the worst of the dirt was gone. "This the last of the porker's med supplies?"

The kit was down to bare-bones. "Yeah."

He looked over her hand first, with a grip that was steadier than hers had been in days, to consider every side of it. "Hold still a second, all right?"

Trip turned her head away. "I'll see Ben soon. You don't have to do this."

"They're bad enough already," he said, without lifting his head. "And what if you don't find Ben right away?"

"I will."

Monkey flipped her hand over, to peel the hair-thin strips of bandaging there, and didn't answer.

His fingertips traced over the edges of her wound, where the skin was still intact, pausing on the places where the skin felt warm to her, and must have felt like fire to him. He muttered to himself, things she probably didn't want to catch, and kept searching.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"Infection. You see it once, you never want to see it again."

She looked up before she meant to, and saw his scars, gnarled and ashen, but still healed clean enough.

"Okay," he sighed. "This is going to sting. Try to hold still."

"Sure."

But she still turned her head, even when the sting wasn't as bad as she expected, and no worse than the ache had been for the past few days. Monkey was gentle anyway, and she barely felt pressure from his fingers at all. He pressed neat thumbfuls of ointment into her palms, as frugal with it as he could manage, and Trip had to remind herself to breathe when it went crooked in her chest.

"I'm going to find out how far the tunnel goes," Monkey said, as he worked.

"Why even bother?"

Monkey grunted. "It'd be nice to have a backup plan."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," Trip said, but remembered Jason before she meant to, crouched and coming up fast to hit Monkey hard, and winced.

"Sorry, trying to take it easy," Monkey said, and she didn't bother to explain.

He started in on what was left of the gauze. "Look. We got caught bad out at Liberty. It doesn't need to happen again. And I'd rather face whatever's down there than have to break in through the front door, if it comes to that."

"We don't know what's in that tunnel," Trip said. "It might be even more dangerous than the patrols."

"And they could always shoot you as soon as you get in range," Monkey said. "I don't trust them."

"You don't trust anyone," she said, before she meant it.

"And you trust everyone," he said blandly. "Other hand."

He released her first hand back into her care, and Trip lifted it in front of her face. The bandaging was neat and effective, and didn't pull on her skin when she moved. She drummed her fingers in the air, but everything seemed to be working the way it was supposed to.

"Other hand," he said again.

She looked back to the city, and saw it shimmer in the midday heat that rose off the ground.

"I always wanted to come here," she said, for no reason. "Dad always said they had so much tech built right into the infrastructure. He said the city kept expanding in sections as people moved in, so they knock down walls to build out every few years."

"Hm," Monkey said, just to make noise. His hand was still outstretched, waiting for hers.

"Do you think they'll keep looking?" she asked.

"For what?"

"For whoever's taking the kids, once they know it's not you."

He rolled his shoulders. "Who knows. But there haven't been any new recordings though, right? About more kids going missing? So it's stopped now."

"That doesn't change the fact that it happened. Wouldn't you want to know?"

"Sure. I ended up with a dead kid on my door, and I want to know why."

Trip had lowered her hands back to her lap, her bandaged hand clasping the other protectively. "But would you keep looking, if Granville wouldn't?"

He was quiet for a minute. "Yeah, I guess so."

"After you leave?"

She hadn't meant to ask that, because once he did leave, his life was his again. That was the whole point. But she hadn't quite conjured up the image of him driving off yet, to dissolve in a cloud of dust that wouldn't bring him back, no matter how many times it had before. She shoved the feeling off, until she had time to deal with it.

Monkey sat still for a few seconds before reaching over and pulling her other hand to him, and she let him.

He cleared bits of dirt and stone from her palms, and held on when he found something pointed nudged under her skin, and pried it free before she could tear her hand loose.

"You get that many people together," he said slowly, "they can't seem to do anything right."

He had to mean Granville, and maybe Liberty, too. A blush clawed its way up the back of Trip's neck. "We did everything we—"

"I didn't mean _you_," he said.

"Okay, but you can't just..." she started, but clamped her mouth shut when the disinfectant splashed over her skin. "It just...gets complicated with more people. Everywhere's going to be like that, somehow. That's how cities are. People mean well, but they can't do everything, you know?"

Monkey was being too careful with her, like she'd break if he wasn't, and Trip suddenly wanted it to be over and done with, so she didn't have to feel his skin on her knuckles. He spread cool ointment into her palm with careful strokes that it probably didn't need, and Trip kept her head turned toward Granville to avoid seeing the concentration on his face while he did.

"I guess," Monkey said at last, and sounded like he didn't at all.

He finished with no gauze to spare, and tucked the edges up and under. He held onto her hand a bit longer, turning it over, looking for weak spots or things he'd missed. "Better?"

"I think so. Thank you."

His thumb ghosted over the inside of her wrist, probably by accident, and suddenly her hand was free.

She stood, and Monkey looked past her to the exposed tunnel. "I'm going to see how far that goes," he said. "If it goes right into the city, I'll catch up with you."

Trip had to fight not to ball her hands, so carefully wrapped and new-feeling for the first time in days. "You shouldn't go anywhere near, not until I can find someone who'll listen."

"And what if something happens, and you get stuck there?" he asked. "It's not just you on the line."

He must have seen shock on her face, because he kept going before she could answer. "The kids," he said quickly. "How are we going to get back to them if things go bad here? Haven't you been talking about them this entire time?"

"Yeah, but..."

"You want to get back so bad?" he asked. "We both go in. You want to tackle the front door, fine. But I'm finding a backup route."

She wanted anger to flash up, wild and caustic, but she could still feel his fingerprints on her skin, and she didn't have the energy. "Fine. I can't stop you, anyway. But how am I going to find you once I'm done, if you won't stay here?"

"I'll find—" he said, and drew up short.

They watched each other for a second, and Trip's hand instinctively went to her arm, where her databand should have been, and grasped at the air.

"Fuck," Monkey said. "I keep forgetting. Well, we'll just find each other somehow."

The city was big and sprawling, and Trip felt lost in it before even setting foot inside, and Monkey wanted to run through its access tunnels and hope for the best. "If I can't find you, I'll come back here and wait, okay?"

"Fine," Monkey said, and they fell back into silence, watching Granville.

Trip drew up strength for it, for the walk up to the gate, and for starting the search for Ben, wherever he was beyond it. She was squaring her shoulders, bit by bit, when Monkey unclipped the Cloud from his belt. "Here."

He handed it to her, and the Cloud was cold and heavy and solid in her hands. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You get stuck, use it. Just run."

Trip stared at the deep scars in the metal from mech claws and who knew what else. "I don't think I can."

Monkey reached over. "Look, here's the power—"

"I know how it _works_," she said. "I just can't fly it."

Monkey pressed the primer anyway, enough for her to feel the first waves of cushioning air puff out. "It pretty much flies itself. Just get your feet flat on it, pick a direction and go. You'll get it."

She redid the catch and the shock waves of air cut off. "I can't fly it," she said again.

"Then use it however you want. As a weapon, if you have to. Just take it."

He was talking in short, clipped words that were almost angry, and Trip held the Cloud gingerly, as if it was about to start breathing. "What about you?"

"I'll manage."

He leaned back, waiting, and Trip yanked the mouth of her pack open and pushed the Cloud to the bottom.

"Ready?" he asked.

Trip looked around, but there was nothing else to bring, and she shrugged. "Yeah."

"Right. I'll help you up."

Monkey hooked his hands together and boosted her onto the collapsed slab, up to the surface. Trip grabbed hold of the first thing she found and hauled herself into blinding daylight.

"I'll be back in a few hours," she said, back down at him. "Are you sure you won't just stay here?"

"We should know all the ways out," he said gruffly. "Always know the ways out."

Trip could see a bit more of the city from here, where the sun glinted off of metal roofing and back into the sky, and where the walls had been painted and re-painted, and baked into dullness again. Granville was already more than she'd dared to expect, all mystery and industry, and she was surprised to find herself already thinking about coming back, under better circumstances, to find out how all the pieces fit together.

When she looked back to Monkey, he was watching the city with narrowed eyes, like he expected it to move toward them once he looked away, and crush them both.

"Okay," she said, to herself more than him. "I'm off."

"Right. See you there."

He said it dully, without meeting her eyes, and Trip shifted as the Cloud dug into her back, and stood.

"Be safe," she said, out of habit.

Monkey made a motion that wasn't quite shrugging. "Be safe."

Trip slid down the slab, back to solid ground and the footpath that would lead her straight to the front gate, without looking back.

* * *

><p>Someone should have noticed her walking right up the footpath to the front door, but there wasn't so much as a shout, even a dozen yards from the main gate. Everything vanished behind the top of the walls the closer she got, until the only thing she could see over them was the radio tower.<p>

She got all the way to the smaller gate without any kind of alarms, and the city felt even more abandoned and unwelcome up close.

The gate was tired but wicked-looking, with spined wires around the slats. Trip tried to peer through, up on tiptoes, but she could only see meshwork and what looked like a second set of doors beyond.

A speaker at her side snapped on with a whipcrack of static, and Trip whirled.

"State your business."

While she considered, the voice repeated it. "State your business."

"I'm here to find someone," she said. "He's somewhere in the city, and I need to find him. And I need to speak to whoever gets the dragonflies, and I need to find out if—"

"State your business," the voice said again, and she heard the tinny quality in it that time, like a recording that had been copied so many times there was nothing living left in it.

"State you—"

"Visiting," she said loudly, and the recording stopped, mid-playback.

The speakers snapped off, and she waited.

After a second, the slat on the right side of the doors opened. "What're you carrying?"

She couldn't see him, but it was a real person that time. "Food? That's really it."

"Put your hands on your head. Door's opening."

The slat flipped shut again. A moment later, the gate started to open with a squeal of rust and aged hinges, and a blast of air poured out into the sunlight.

"This way," someone said, the other side of the door.

When she stepped in, the gate slammed shut behind her, almost catching her on the heel.

The next gate fit into a chain-link fence, rimmed with barbed wire at the top and bottom for good measure. She stared at it for a long time, feeling her hands throb at the thought of having to climb them, and hoped she'd never have to.

There were two guards, one on her side of the gate, and the other farther in, both with rifles that hung at their sides. Trip couldn't tell if they'd been part of the patrol in the middle of the night, but there was really no way of knowing. They wore the same uniforms, but in daylight, they were more human, and they looked ragged and exhausted.

"Said put your hands on your head," the closer one said, and might have been more irritated if he'd thought she was worth it.

"I'm not armed."

He snorted in disdain. "Wouldn't care if you were. Half the city's carrying lately. Need to see your head."

Slowly, Trip bunched her hair between her fingers, and pushed it away from her forehead.

He came closer than she wanted, peering at the areas at her temples. She saw fear flash in his eyes, but it cleared when he leaned back. "Okay. Hand over your bag."

"You're checking people to see if they're enslaved," she said numbly.

"Your bag," he repeated.

She tipped it from her shoulder and handed it to him.

He fumbled with the knot for a second. "What's that on your arm?"

"Mech scanner," she said, because it was the first thing that came into her head. "Why are you checking for enslaved scars?"

"You have a scanner on your arm?"

"It's a mod," she snapped. "Are you not letting any enslaved in? You can't do that."

"We can't?" he asked. "News to me. It's not like—"

The guard stopped, because his fingers hit something solid in the bottom of her bag.

"The hell is this?" he asked, and pulled the Cloud free.

Her chest seized. "It's mine."

He shrugged her bag onto his shoulder to get a better look at it. "Shit, I haven't seen one of these in... Where did you find it?"

"Somewhere. I don't know. It's not dangerous."

He slid his palm over the edge of the Cloud, where the plates clicked together to keep it contained. "Huh," he said. "Does it work?"

"No," she said, quickly. "Give it back, please."

He held on a while longer, and Trip saw sunlight glint off its edge, where Monkey had greased it to keep the water off, and to keep it from rusting. Her stomach dropped, like it would if she'd been standing on the Cloud when it kicked into the sky, and bit back the urge to tear it from his hands.

"I wonder if it's still worth anything," he said idly, and put his finger on the release.

"It's not calibrated," she said, with as much warning as she could muster.

"So?"

"So you do that, and it's going to take your hand with it."

His finger froze on the release, and pulled away. "Well, why the hell are you carrying it like that? Thought you said it wasn't dangerous."

He tossed it back into her bag. "Don't know why you're hauling trash across the waste."

She grabbed the bag back as soon as it was in range, and hugged it tight to her chest.

"You can go on through," he said, and made a tight, spiralling motion overhead. The guard on the other side started to crank the gate open with a faint squeal.

Trip could hear voices now, where the people must have been crowding in the street. The guard on this side of the gate wore a pair of sunglasses that bubbled out from his face, and Trip's reflection was bloated and curved where his eyes should have been.

Before they could slide the gate shut behind her, she turned to both of them. "Look, I'm trying to find a friend of mine. He would have gotten here a few days ago."

"Lots of people coming in. Wouldn't know him."

"Just ask someone at command," the other said, and didn't sound like he expected it to do her much good. "Maybe they can point you."

Trip sighed and shifted her bag so the Cloud wasn't jamming in the small of her back. "And if I can't find that, where's Lee?"

She thought she'd have to repeat it, because no one answered for a second. "Do you know who he—"

When she looked up, they's both gone unnaturally still. "Why are you looking for Dr. Lee?"

Their hands had snapped to their rifles but hadn't loosed them, but Trip swallowed anyway. "He's...? Graham was sick, and we thought..."

They relaxed slightly, but first guard's finger was at the safety on his rifle, for no reason. "Sick with what?"

"He had a fever, and we thought he was going to die. We kept trying to reach Lee, but..."

The guard pulled his finger away from the safety, and the energy flowed out of him. "You're a little late."

Trip tried to get him to look at her, and not the street beyond. "Did something happen to him?"

He lifted his sunglasses from his face, and there was red-rimmed exhaustion in his eyes. "You find Dr. Lee, you let us know. Tell him to come back and grab his lab rats."

He kept peering over her shoulder, back into the city, and she realized he was nervous about something inside, rather than outside the walls.

The blast doors opened, on the other side of the divider, and Trip heard the patrol vehicle engines spit on, and roar back outside. Her fingers gripped tight around her armband before she realized it.

"You find him," the other guard continued, "you bring him back. Tell him to clean up this goddamn mess."

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "Where is he?"

"You want the details, check with command."

"Yeah, but all I want to know is—"

The watchtower door clanged open, and the guards looked past her.

"_Listen_," Trip said, as their attention wandered. "I really need to find him."

"You and everyone else," the guard said. He lifted his hands to his mouth. "Hey!"

A young man was exiting backwards, dragging a crate that thumped on the last few steps. His uniform was like theirs, but not so clean-pressed and militaristic. He jerked his chin nervously at the noise, and almost tripped and fell.

"Hey!" the guard shouted again. "You going back to command?"

The young man blinked in the sunlight at the group of them, and shielded his eyes. "What?"

"If you're headed back, take her" — he jerked his entire arm toward Trip — "with you."

"I'm just starting my rounds, I can't—"

The guard next to Trip flipped his sunglasses back down and sneered. "What, you too busy running errands?"

Trip watched him try to lug the box over, like it would tear his arms from their sockets. "I don't need an escort," she said. "Just point me in the right direction and I'll go."

"You'll be back in half an hour, lost. Or you'll end up at one of the other posts." Then, facing the tower again, the guard shouted, "_Toby_! Hurry your ass up! You're playing tour guide today!"

"I _heard_ you!"

Toby loped his way over, and Trip gave up. "Fine. Thanks anyway."

"Yeah, well, stay out of trouble," the guard said, and turned away. "And stay away from the veg."

They went back to the watchtowers before she had anything to say, and the doors had slammed shut by the time Toby made it to her, box in tow. He was younger than he looked from a distance, a few years younger than she was. He had a thin, pinched face with features that couldn't decide if they wanted to stay where they were or recede back into his head.

"So who are you?" he asked sourly.

"Trip," she said. "What did he mean, the veg?"

He snapped at the box, irritated, and it quieted. "I'm headed to command, but we're taking the long way. You keep up and you'll get there."

"Seriously, can't anyone just point?"

But Toby started walking, surprisingly fast considering the weight of his load. Trip looked back to the layered gates for a second, but everything was quiet again, and the guard were gone.

She had to sprint to catch up with Toby just before he stepped onto the main causeway, and the crowd swallowed them both.

* * *

><p>Monkey watched her as far as he could, when she went through the smaller gate and right through into the city. He waited for a few minutes after that, to see if anything went immediately wrong. There was no clear plan of what to do if it did, except to see how fast he could cover the distance to the perimeter, and how long it would take the guards to notice him. But there hadn't been any need, and Trip passed into the city without any trouble, and the tension in his chest smoothed out.<p>

He dropped down into the exposed tunnel again, with the flashlight strapped to his belt to keep his hands free. The wind was quieter now, but it snaked past his head and back up, so there had to be at least one way out. He started off toward the city, slow enough to make sure he always had a solid place to put his feet, but not wasting any time, either.

The tunnel was narrow at first, but opened up suddenly until the ceiling was a good ten feet overhead, and tracks the width of his outspread arms spread out in every direction. He saw the carts meant to carry mech parts, and should have been more surprised than he was. A lot of the old world's transit systems were harvested for mech production, and underground meant less chance to be noticed. He didn't hear anything still active, but kept his staff ready, just in case.

After a while, the tunnel dwindled back to a space just big enough for him, and Monkey had to concentrate to find safe footholds. In places, it took all of his attention, which was welcome enough. Working that hard at something simple meant using his senses, and his bare hands, and earning dirt under his fingernails and new callouses. It meant devoting every scrap of energy he had to just moving forward, listening, and left no room for thinking.

He did anyway, when he didn't catch himself and force his head clear again. He knew, before she ever did, that it wasn't going to work the way she hoped. But hearing it, and her getting to say it first, caught him like a blow, and he climbed rougher than he needed to when the tunnel dead-ended against a runged ladder.

There was a smell here, rotten and wet, but he didn't stop to investigate. The middle rungs were gone, snapped clean off, and Monkey had to jump to clear the empty space. He hauled himself up onto the overhang, and listened for anything new. But the tunnel was quiet and dead, and he didn't think anyone had seen it in decades.

The fresh air intensified suddenly, and he almost missed the fork in the tunnel that led back the way he'd come, but at an angle that veered off southwest. It wouldn't go into the city, but Monkey could taste clean air in it, so it had to let out somewhere. He made a note of it, and kept going toward Granville.

The tunnel grew boring again, and Monkey had nothing to stop himself from thinking in circles. Trip's hands were a mess, maybe minutes from infection, but he couldn't tell her that. She was so sure of herself, like she was sure of everything, even when she didn't have the faintest idea what she was trying to fix. Skin and bones weren't machinery, and they'd fail on you when you'd think they should have been easier, being attached to you and all. But she just didn't have an eye for it. She probably never would.

He hadn't been watching where he was going, and smacked his shoulder into an outcropping of rock that hadn't been beaten back, and swore at more than just the rocks.

She'd be fine. She could, as soon as they pulled Jason out of the city and tossed him back into the wasteland to pine after Pyramid on his own time. She could go back to her databand and computers and turbines, and he'd go back to the road. It was a year overdue anyway.

He thought all this as brutally as he could, at the darkness that flinched away when the flashlight came near, and at the glistening tunnel walls, and at anyone who might have been listening, if they'd been interested in hearing him talk himself into something as if his life depended on it.

"Shit," he said anyway, and stomped over a sheet of metal that had fallen across the tracks. "Whatever the fuck you want, Trip."

Her name echoed back at him up and down the tunnel, less and less sure every time, until it sounded like a question.

* * *

><p>Toby was trying to lose her, almost as soon as they hit the main road, and Trip had to focus to keep him in sight. The streets must have been familiar and dull to him, but they were choked with people and nervous voices that chattered too high-strung. Trip kept swiveling to catch a word or two, but never quite managed.<p>

He took her on a wildly causeless path through the city, stopping every now and then to disappear into a doorway, where guards stood tense and alert. Trip used the breaks to investigate the structures over the city like she had reason to, partly to keep them from thinking too closely about her or her armband, and partly because there was so much to look at.

There were solar panels on every rooftop and anywhere else that might see more than an hour of sunlight. There were hundreds of them just from what she could see, and probably thousands throughout the city. A number were cracked and weather-beaten, and probably didn't pull a quarter of the energy they should have been, but it the skyline was full of them and shimmered like water.

There was the dull taint of exhaust in the air, and Trip counted a dozen vehicles while she waited, some electric, some gas-powered. They all plowed through the crowd, which parted to let them through before snapping shut again like a pulled zipper. Somewhere, she heard a transport circling inside the perimeter, on worn tracks, and she peered over the crowd, hoping to see it.

Toby reappeared before she was done looking, lugging the box at his side, and slid back into the crowd without so much as a glance in her direction.

By the second stop, Trip had figured out how to catch up with him before he could leave her behind, and Toby had to switch the box to the other hand to make room as she fell into step.

"Why did he say that?" she asked, after the both avoided being shoulder-checked by the same man in the crowd.

"Who, say what?"

"About the veget—" Trip said, and caught the word halfway, horrified with herself. "The enslaved?"

"Aside from the fact that they're insane?" he asked, and she bit back the ugly thing that crawled up her throat at that.

"They're not insane," she said, but Toby ducked into a short building, with a guard on the roof, his rifle poised at his side.

Granville was louder than she expected, if that was possible, and Trip kept wanting to clamp her hands to her ears, to drown out the presence of it, more than the noise. But the more she watched, the more uneasiness she saw in the people that wasn't just reflected from her. They were decidedly nervous, never looking at anything for very long. When they walked, they were quick and businesslike about it, and often didn't see her until she was right in their way, when it was too late to avoid a dancing near-collision.

Toby wrestled with the box lid for a second in the doorway before coming out, and Trip couldn't quite place the buzzing noise that escaped before he slammed it shut.

"What are you doing, anyway?" she asked. "Are these guard posts?"

"Yeah," Toby said. "That's the last of them, though."

"Why inside the city, though? Wouldn't anything dangerous come from out there?"

She hooked her thumb in the air to indicate the wasteland, and Toby shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't weighed down. "Not now, anyway. We have to make sure they don't gather. They keep trying."

"The enslaved," Trip said slowly, and Toby shrugged again.

He made a quick twist around the corner, and Trip just barely dipped in time to avoid crashing into an overhanging sign.

"What did he mean about Lee being gone?" she asked. "I thought he was taking care of the enslaved here."

"Where the heck are you from?" Toby snarled. "Who calls them the _enslaved_?"

Without waiting for her answer, he grunted and shifted the box to his other side. "Anyway, he wasn't taking _care_ of them. Why do you think everything's such a mess?"

"How long has he been gone?"

Toby thought about it. "A week?"

Trip's stomach flopped. "He was supposed to be here."

"Yeah, well, he's not. And he just dumped all the vegetables on us, halfway though his stupid project. The ones that aren't brain-dead are a pain in the ass."

She grappled with the faint memory of Ben saying something about Lee and the enslaved, but it felt like years ago. "Do you know what he was working on?"

"No, but command is pissed about it."

"Is that why everyone's so nervous?" Trip asked.

"Partly. Mostly, it has to do with the message."

"What message?"

"You haven't heard it yet?" he asked, and she shook her head. "Well, everyone's out looking for him now. Command put the order out that he's a fugitive, so he won't last long."

"A fugitive?" Trip asked, and tried so hard to sound naturally curious that it was like forcing glass through stone. "Where do they think he is?"

"Dunno. They think he'll head back where he came from, though."

If the patrol hadn't seen them, there might still be time. "Where's that?"

"Liberty," Toby said. "Where else?"

He said it with the same sarcastic half-twist that Harold had used, forever ago. "Look," Trip said. "Who can I talk to about it? They've got it all wrong."

"What, you know something?"

"Sort of," she said, when Toby's eyes went wide. "Who could I talk to?"

He thought for a while, and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "Dallas won't see you, but maybe someone else would. I don't know. Try to catch one of the soldiers at command."

They stopped in an open area, and Trip realized they were a stone's throw from the base of the radio tower, so close she could only just see the top when she tilted her head back until it threatened to crack.

"Command's over there," Toby said. He motioned toward a taller building, made of solid brick and enclosed in a sea of fencing and barbed wire. There was a gate near the front, but it was open. "They might know where your friend is."

"Does it have to look like a prison?" Trip asked, and thought of all the hands that welcomed people back home.

"Dunno. What else is it supposed to look like?"

"Anything," Trip said. "Hey, do you know where I can get a databand?"

His face scrunched. "They're military issue. Civilians don't get them. But you can ask while you're there. Good luck, though."

Toby turned to go, but paused halfway. "Fuck."

"What?" Trip asked. He was staring around her shoulder, at the tight group of people gathered around a shop doorway.

"They keep gathering around the comm," Toby said, irritated, and reached for his radio before realizing he didn't have one. "Shit, left it back at dispatch."

"They gather to hear the message?"

Toby fumbled at the rest of his gear, but only had the box that snarled with metallic buzzing when he bumped it. "Crap, what are they doing so close to command?"

She watched the group elbow at each other in an effort to get close to the radio, and tried to imagine news of Monkey and that boy, blaring out over every device in Granville.

"Screw it," Toby said at last. "I'll send it out from dispatch." He jerked his shoulder. "Command's over there. Don't stick around if you don't want to get caught."

"Get caught what?" Trip asked, but Toby was half a dozen steps away already, with the box bouncing at his side.

* * *

><p>He lost track of how far he'd gone faster than he wanted, and Monkey had to guess he was somewhere under the outskirts of the city, just inside the barrier between it and the rest of the wasteland. The tunnels dipped under rocks that had been too tough to break through, and he kept finding crushed metal gates and long-dead security systems.<p>

None of the tunnels made any goddamn sense, and Monkey was doubling back for the third or fourth time when he found yet another looped passageway that curved up toward the surface. Every one he found broke off in a different direction. Some didn't go any farther than ten feet, but a few were too long to see anything down, and he tried to choose the ones that had fresher air first, although those still led to dead ends and vents too small to fit his hand through.

Toward the center of the city, the tunnels were lined with metal lights that were thick with webbing and probably hadn't seen electricity in a century. The flashlight was barely enough to keep him from stumbling, and he wondered how anyone would have been able to navigate in the dark, if they didn't know exactly where to put their feet. Where the rocks shifted and tore away under his hands and skittered under him, Monkey thought it was a lot like climbing, only sideways.

He could hear the city overhead, sometimes so close that he could make out individual footsteps, or a vehicle rumbling on an uneven road. Sometimes he heard generators, and came close enough to determine that they didn't feed power back into the tunnels, and there was no way out by following them.

He slipped once, on a flat rock that was slick with water, and reached for the Cloud on instinct to make the going easier. But it wasn't at his side, and his gut went solid and cold for a second before he remembered that Trip had it.

After a long time, he started to notice places where he swore the patterns in the dirt looked like footprints, at least more than they did in the other tunnels. He stopped to flatten the flashlight beam against the floor, and saw a shoe tread clear as anything, pressed deep in the dirt and pushed harder in the toe. Someone had been running this way, but in a place where there was little air and no weather, the marks could have been made decades ago and never changed. The entire place was tomb-like, and held tight to whatever it got.

Monkey stood slowly. He followed the tracks, but was careful to make his own around them, and followed them up the incline toward the city. The prints disappeared when the floor was solid rock, but always reappeared in the thicker dirt. They led him through the network of side tunnels that he might have ignored, until he realized he was on an incline, up toward street level.

He almost missed the gossamer-thin line across the tunnel floor, a few inches off the ground. He saw it a split second before his foot would have crossed over, but the effort of stopping kicked up a scattering of small rocks that tumbled over the wire, and Monkey threw himself back.

He dropped the flashlight in the instant the trap went off, and light bounced up into the tunnel as he heard a sharp rush of air and the sound of metal clashing on rock. It only lasted a second, and by the time he got the flashlight back and figured out where he needed to look, it was all over.

The trap was simple but brutal, and he crouched to consider the toothed blade that had been rigged up against a bow of some kind, drawn back against the wall and tied to a small box that ran a hairsbreadth cable across the tunnel. The tracks were everywhere here, ground into each other around the trap and on either side of the tunnel.

"Huh," Monkey said. "Wonder who that was for."

He pulled the blade from the dirt, and considered the teeth that had barely suffered on the patches of exposed stone. He set it aside, where he wouldn't trip on it on the way back, and snapped the wire for good measure.

The footprints kept going, and he stepped around the trap to follow them. He went slower this time, in case there were more, and watched for places where the tracks slowed down again, where the person had stopped to lay other surprises.

The tunnel sloped up, toward the noise in the street, and Monkey led the tracks lead the way.

* * *

><p>Trip had to plow her way through the crowd with knees and sharp elbows, and got elbowed back herself a few times for it. The little building was a shop of some kind, and she thought she saw mechanical bits and bobs as she pushed her way past the two dozen or so bodies that crowded the doorway.<p>

She could almost just hear the voice on the message, and someone swore heartily at her when she ducked under their arm and up to the counter.

She was still too late, and the message was almost over.

The quality was bad, but she could just hear the voice on the radio fading in. "—on our way back," it said, and squeaked off again.

Trip didn't have enough to go on to place the voice. It was warm and welcoming, almost beckoning, and the crowd leaned in toward it, listening with rapt attention.

They were all angled toward the radio, and Trip twisted to see that she was surrounded by a sea of scars and fingers that worried at their foreheads. Every one of them was enslaved, like Toby had said, and they stood watching the radio awaiting more gospel, if that's what was pouring from it.

Near the edge of the crowd, a few people bobbed up, hoping to see the signal somehow. As she caught their attention, a few of them met her gaze guiltily, like they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't. They wandered off quickly, with fast, pounding steps and glances back toward command.

Out of the corner of her eye, Trip saw a girl with dark hair watch her for a second before pivoting and heading off in the opposite direction.

The message started up again. "Thirty-five," it said, flatter that time. "Fifty-three..."

"Twenty point five seven nine..." a man at her side predicted.

"Twenty point five seven nine..." the message said, right after.

Someone closer flipped the radio off, apparently at the end of what they needed to hear, and the crowd grumbled. They stood perfectly still for a moment, gazing at the radio with bizarre warmth, and Trip bit her lip, thinking.

It didn't sound like any kind of warning about Monkey, or anything about the kids at all. There wasn't enough of the voice to hear familiarity in it, but it picked at her.

"Were those coordinates, at the end?" she asked.

She'd been thinking out loud, and almost leapt over the counter when someone spoke at her side. "It's twenty miles west of here."

She couldn't find the voice in the crowd. "What's out there?" Trip asked. "Why give those numbers?"

"Dunno. They won't let anyone out to see."

"_Shit_," someone else said, closer to the street, and they all turned.

The soldiers wore the same uniforms as the guards, but had vests and shields, and masks that dangled over their chests. The edges of the crowd splintered off, and the soldiers pushed them aside, with more force than they could justify, and crashed toward the shop.

The remaining group rose up around her, suddenly a mass of twisting, awkward bodies. Some of the listeners fled, but the rest stood their ground, and Trip was trapped near the back.

She grabbed at her armband without thinking, and the soldiers stopped fifteen feet from the shop.

"Where's the radio?" The closest soldier was too close to be shouting, but did so anyway. "The broadcasts are illegal. Go back to your homes."

"If they're illegal, why are you still sending them?" someone yelled.

Trip thought it was a reasonable question, but the soldier sneered at the man who'd shouted, and the group in general. "By the time you hear me say three, this entire street needs to be empty."

"Fuck you!" someone yelled, and Trip decided it was time to go.

"One!" the soldier said.

Trip tried to fight her way back to the street, but the remaining crowd was knotted tight, and she couldn't squeeze through.

A woman with milk-white scars around her eyebrows cupped her hands around her mouth. "If you want to get rid of us so bad, open the gates!"

"_Two_!" He'd pulled the mask over his face, and the word came out muffled.

The enslaved pressed in around her, and Trip was suffocating on the weight of them, where they didn't see her and tried to take up the space she was already using.

"THREE!" the soldier roared.

"Don't!" Trip shouted, not that anyone so much as looked in her direction.

One of the soldiers tossed something at the ground, a metal ball the size of an orange. A cloud of thick smoke rushed out at them, and the crowd leapt over each other to get away.

The smoke billowed up in an explosion of gray-green fog, and suddenly the crowd was a hazard of fumbling limbs and bodies. Trip stumbled over them toward the street, her eyes burning. The soldiers had their masks on, pushing each one of them away and down the street as they got near.

"Get moving," one shouted. "Go home, all of you!"

She couldn't see or smell anything. Her senses went haywire, reporting everything back a hundred times stronger than usual. The sound of the enslaved meeting the soldiers was a cacophony of shouting and fists, and every blow was an earthquake in her head.

Somewhere in the racket, Trip thought she heard her name, or something close to it.

She couldn't breathe. Everything tasted and felt like fire, and she hit the brickwork on the side of the store with both palms, and she swore with what little air she had left.

"Trip?"

There was a voice on her other side that time, and Trip raised the hand that wasn't uselessly trying to filter the air over her mouth to ward him off. Her hand struck his vest, rough and heavy, and she swore again.

Incredibly, the soldier stepped back. "Thought that mouth was yours. Come on, let's get you out of here."

She couldn't identify the familiar rumble in the voice that fast, but she let him guide her out of the smoke cloud, where people were still fighting back, and she heard the loud crack of bone on something more solid.

"Easy," he said, and pulled her out of the ruckus. His voice was distorted and weird, and when she looked up, she almost jerked free again. The gas mask loomed down at her, round and buglike, and she heard him chuckle behind it. "Hold still, got one for you."

He pressed a mask over her face, and Trip breathed in air that didn't burn, even if it was a little metallic and thin.

"There you go," the soldier said. "I'd ask how you ended up in the middle of all this, but I'm not surprised."

He kept walking her away from the chaos, close enough to warn her when she came close to walking blind into walls, and Trip gulped down clean air the whole time until her head felt clearer.

Eventually, they stopped, and he pulled the mask from her face. "There you go. Good as new, right?"

She squinted at him. "...Harold?"

He beamed, and it was the same wide smile, with its random teeth. "I knew it was you! What brings you to civilization?"

"I'm looking for..." she started, and was interrupted by a fit of crackling in her lungs.

Harold winced in sympathy and pounded her on the back. "Okay, easy. Packs a punch, doesn't it?"

When she fought air back into her chest, she looked him over. He was in a Granville uniform, probably two sizes too small for him, but the buttons were doing their best to hold it all together. "You're in their military?" she wheezed.

"Trial basis," he said. "Had to do something, you know. Heck of a time to join, though. We didn't think there'd be any of them here. And with the radio message, it's all a mess. Sophie's beside herself."

"Why did you gas them?" she asked. "They weren't doing anything."

"Who, the veg?" he asked. "New rules, you know. No gathering of more than five people. No being out after curfew. No exit from the city until the lockdown is lifted."

It was all preprogrammed into him, and probably every other soldier here.

Trip coughed, gaining ground that time. "What's going on around here?"

Harold smiled, and patted her on the shoulder, and ignored the sound of a riot shield cracking someone in the skull. "Well. I'll get you to Sophie. Get that smoke out of your eyes, okay?"

Her lungs might as well have been bleeding, and everything she said felt like gravel against her tongue. "I don't have time. I have to get to command. I need to find out what the heck is going on here."

"Locked up tight during all this," he said, reasonably, and she saw that the gates had been fastened shut. "We'll fill you in on whatever you want to know, and get some hot tea in you to boot. Come on."

"I need to find a friend of mine," she insisted. "I don't have time for tea."

"Very, very small cup," he said, kind but unyielding. "Sophie would love to see you."

"Are we talking about the same Sophie?"

Harold blinked, then laughed loudly. "Well, she won't refuse you a cup of tea. And maybe we can help you find your friend."

"You think you know where he is?"

Harold shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

He motioned toward the residential part of the city, away from command, and Trip hesitated before starting after him. The smoke had wandered off, coiling along the ground through the city instead of rising into the air, and the sound of the clash had fallen to a murmur from this distance.

"You coming?" Harold asked, from the street corner. "They'll be doing a sweep soon, just to make sure everything's calm. No point in getting in their way."

Trip took a breath that didn't cleanse anything, and it left her weaker than it came in. She looked at the ground for a second, where tendrils of gray smoke passed over her shoes, weak and curious. She spent a moment wondering if Monkey could hear all this from where he was, somewhere under her feet, before leaving the smoke behind.

* * *

><p>The closer he got to the surface, the more he smelled something wrong in the air that cut into his chest. The tunnel had leveled out, once it climbed high enough to reach the very bottom of the city, and must have passed by underground rooms without him having any way of knowing where.<p>

Monkey found two more traps along the way. They were just as simple as the first, build on a spring release and something nasty tied to the end. He disabled both of them, and found a smattering of footprints at each one before carrying on.

He could see the city street from here, through thin slits of grating. It was an alley, or some dark side street that he didn't see activity on. The opening was shoulder-height, and he could peer through it without much fear of being seen. But there was no way to get through, even if he could sandwich himself to half his size.

After another few hundred feet, there was a short flight of metal steps, right up to a heavy door set in the rock. It wouldn't budge, no matter how hard he shouldered it, and it wasn't until the third try that he saw the control panel on the side, blinking at him.

It was the kind of security rig that he'd need Trip to get through, and Monkey debated for a second if smashing it would release the door or lock it permanently, and eventually settled on the second.

He started back toward the section of tunnel that ran alongside the street and heard the shouting before seeing any feet go by, but he flattened against the wall anyway. After a second, the shouting passed into the next street, and the smoke smell was so strong his eyes started to water. It wasn't wood or coal, and he paused to place it.

The smoke filtered in through the grate, and he wrapped his fingers through the metalwork to clutch at it. It seemed to cling to his skin, and he sniffed experimentally and immediately regretted it, and the coughing tore through him like shrapnel.

He hadn't heard the girl get that close when he was doubled over, and by the time he righted, her shoes were two feet from his nose, right outside the grate.

The smoke was dissipating quickly down the tunnel, and Monkey drew in a few breaths while he waited for her to leave.

Her shoes twisted in the dirt, a splash of dust and smoke around her ankles.

"_Go_ already," he hissed, between his teeth.

The shoes paused, and turned toward the grate.

Before he could draw back, she dropped to the ground, and peered into the tunnel, and right at him.

She was younger than Trip, with dark hair that looked like it had no idea what it was meant to be doing, once it grew clear of her scalp. There was a thin cable running to each ear, and disappeared somewhere down her jacket.

For a second, they just stared at each other, with absolutely no idea what to do about it.

He could have darted back into the tunnel, and maybe made it back outside before she had time to figure out where he'd gone. If she started screaming, or took off to get help, he'd have a good lead on whoever came after him, assuming they came from this side.

But she merely watched his slaver band for a long time, and he saw the red light flash against her face, like a beacon that would have grabbed anyone passing by at the right time, and he would have kicked himself if he'd had space.

Her eyes narrowed, thoughtful and calculating, and Monkey had to make a decision.

She saved him from it, by suddenly tugging on the wire that ran to her left ear, and a tiny speaker popped free. "How did you get down there?" she demanded.

Monkey blinked. "What?"

She pushed her face so far down that her hair blocked out most of the light. "I've been trying to get through to that side for weeks. How did you get out?"

"The hell are you— I'm not trying to get out. I'm trying to get _in_."

She stared at him. "Well, you're going the wrong way."

A small army rushed past, and she stiffened and looked over her shoulder. But no one seemed to pay her any attention, and she settled down on the ground, in front of the grate.

"What's going on up there?" Monkey asked. The smell of smoke settled cold and slimy on his skin, and he shook it off.

"Another riot or something," she said. "How did you get this far into the city?"

Riots meant more panic than this, and tipping things over, and fire. Monkey tried to hear what was going on, but it was all a distant droning. "What do you mean, another riot?"

"Not a _real_ riot," the girl said, like that would have been more welcome. "It's mostly the veg. They gather around the radios when the broadcast comes on, and the soldiers break them up, and one of them tosses gas grenade because they're dumber than rocks. They'll run out of them eventually, and then they'll be screwed. _How did you get down there_?"

She talked even faster than Trip, if that was humanly possible. Monkey gestured back over his shoulder, as if that could mean the overpass half a mile back. "There's an opening on the outside."

"You can't be more specific?"

Telling her where the gap was possibly meant losing it, if she told anyone. "Do I need to? You got someone you're trying to smuggle in?"

She sneered at him, the way teenagers did at just about everything. "No. It just needs to come back up outside the walls. I don't care where."

"Well, it does that."

Another set of feet thundered past, followed by a few more, and the girl waited for them to pass before pulling the other earbud free.

"Listen," Monkey said. "You seen a girl with red hair up there? She should have just got in. Her name's Trip."

The girl considered, but only for a split second. "That doesn't help. There's thousands of people here. What's she wearing?"

Monkey opened his mouth, and shut it again. Trip could be wearing anything at all, and he probably wouldn't notice unless it was way more or less fabric than anything else.

"No idea," he said at last.

The girl snorted to herself. "Yeah, okay. Good luck, then. Is she veg, too?"

He didn't need to ask what the word meant, by the way she was staring at his slaver band. "No. But she's got..." Monkey motioned toward his arm. "She's got some kind of tech on her arm. I guess it looks like mine."

The girl's eyes went wide, but she shoved it back, and her face was blank again. "What's it worth to you if I find her?"

Monkey resisted the urge to leave then, but the girl had definitely seen Trip. "I don't have anything. But if you find her, she can open the door at the end of the tunnel."

She was so close he could hear the noise blaring out of the speaker that dangled over her shoulder, more like screaming that tore the air to shreds than actual music. "There's a door?"

"You find her, I'll tell you where."

"I've been over this entire fucking city. There are no doors to the tunnels." She put too much effort into the swearing, like she was still sounding it out, testing how much force had to go behind it for him to take her seriously.

"Yeah," he said, and had to make sure it didn't come out too sarcastic.

Her gaze went wide and blank, like she was picturing the buildings, and Monkey rapped the grate. "So you gonna get her or what?"

The girl rocked back on her heels, thinking. "What makes you think she can get through the door? If it's locked—"

"There's a security panel. It's still active."

"And she can hack it?" she asked doubtfully.

Monkey didn't even think about it. "Yes."

She barely blinked when she looked at him, and he saw her eyes darting over his slaver band, and back out into the city.

"Okay," she said at last. "I'll find her, you can get her out."

"Out?" he asked. "I'm trying to get _in_."

The right side of her mouth twitched. "You're a veg. You're still _connected_. No way you'd want to stay here. And Dr. Lee's gone, anyway. They're all trying to get out."

Monkey damn near pulled the grate right off its hinges. "Lee's gone?"

The girl stood, and he was staring at her shoes again, dirt-caked and worn. "I have to go. I'll find her for you and bring her here."

"What the hell is going on up there?" he demanded, before she could go. "What are you trying to get away from?"

"Me?" she asked, but she was facing away from him, and her voice got caught up in the noise outside. "I'm not trying to get away. There's something I need to do out there. So I'll get your girlfriend, and you stay out of my way after I do."

There had to be other options, but he couldn't think of any of them at the moment.

"Okay, you got it," he said, and she stooped low enough to see his face again.

Her eyes were hard and brittle, like she'd taken them by force from someone older who had reason to look at the world like that. "What's your name?" she asked.

He hesitated.

"Oh, is that a secret, too?" she asked.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "You tell her I'm down here, and I'm looking for her, and she'll know who I am."

The girl snorted and pushed one of the speakers back in place, and the wailing dimmed. "Whatever. I'm Rachel."

"Fine. Rachel. You get Trip here, and you can run right out into the wasteland for all I care."

Rachel looked ready now, like she'd break down the door he couldn't, if she could just get to it.

"Done," she said. "Give me a few hours. And stay out of sight."

"So everyone keeps telling me."

Rachel tapped the side of her head. "You look like a lighthouse under there. Someone's going to notice. And it won't be me next time."

"Thanks for the warning," Monkey said, and wondered how on earth he could get the headband to stop flashing.

She pushed off the ground, and went running across the pavement, leaving a trail of churning smoke in her wake. He fought back the wave of it that pushed into his lungs like a pound of ash, and was still coughing when she turned the corner and was gone.

There was less activity in the street now, and Monkey waited for a minute to see if Rachel came back. But the street was empty for a good while after she left, and he started thinking about the other things that might be hiding in the tunnels, the ones he hadn't gotten to yet. If there were traps along this way, there could be more everywhere else, and it wasn't a good backup plan if the backup plan was booby trapped.

He waited another minute, just in case Rachel happened to bump into Trip in the very next street and brought her straight back. It wouldn't happen, and he knew it, but it was still a good long while before he tore himself away from the grate and started back down the tunnel, to find the surprises that might be waiting for them on their way back out.


	17. Force of Gravity

Note: This one's for niK, because she is goddamn awesome.

* * *

><p>Seventeen: Force of Gravity<p>

* * *

><p>In the middle of all the chaos, Harold was trying to give Trip an impromptu tour of the city. He'd only been there for a short time himself, but he seemed to have learned plenty, and he didn't stop talking the entire way. He pointed out buildings she should know, and the streets she might want to avoid, and the areas they'd had to rope off after the enslaved got too interested there, in a radio or something else. Trip barely heard it, but nodded when nodding seemed appropriate, and followed him against the onslaught of traffic. There wasn't as much of it this way, but everyone was moving faster, with less chance to see them before getting out of the way. The smell of smoke kept after them, drifting on their clothes, and Trip kept scrubbing needles out of her eyes.<p>

"Just a bit more," Harold said, three or four times, and eventually Trip stopped believing it.

The buildings grew taller the farther they went, until they were stories upon stories high, with hundreds of lit windows on each side. Trip stopped to count them, up rows of lights that had to represent more and more people, crammed together in such small spaces that she starting thinking of home in comparison, and the view of open sky where the cliffs dropped off.

"How many people actually live here?" she asked, when Harold was half-turned to her.

"You know, never thought much about it," Harold said. "Enough, I guess."

There were solar panels here, too, and some of the metal plates they stepped on seemed to give a little under them, like they were pressurized. Trip could imagine a million things to do with power like that, harvested from a few thousand people walking over the plates, in place of the force of the waterfalls at Liberty.

After a long time, following Harold like a force-field that filtered the oncoming crowd around them, she stopped looking at the city itself, and tried to concentrate on the people. She had almost gotten used to the idea of anonymity, and could watch people without so much as a flicker of interest or recognition from them. She stared at them in turn, in case she might see a face she would remember from Pyramid, or anything familiar at all.

But the more she looked, the less likely it seemed, and it was another five minutes of searching before Trip realized that they'd only seen a few enslaved since the commotion back at the radio, and none at all in the last hundred faces.

* * *

><p>The tunnels weren't so bad this time, now that he knew where he was going. Monkey started along the main one, where he followed the footprints back to the smaller tunnels that broke away. The footprints were never in any of the offshoots, and whoever made them knew exactly where he was going. Monkey tested them all anyway, just in case, but they dead-ended in cave-ins or exits that had been boarded up tight years ago. There was never any light, not even a lick of cool air that would tell him he'd found another way out, so he headed back to the main tunnel each time, and ticked the dead-end off his list.<p>

There weren't any more traps, but he kept an eye out for them, and stopped a few times, seeing shadows as tripwires. There were only the original three, where the footprints were heaviest. Monkey paused at the first one when he came to it, to think about how long it might have taken to rig. It might have been an hour's work at most, even if you weren't exactly sure what you were trying to build, and only wanted to make sure it would kill whatever came after you.

He was still thinking about it when he reached the drop down into the open area, and he swung himself over the edge to the ladder bolted to the side of the rock face. He only remembered the missing rungs halfway over the edge, and scrambled in the space they should have been.

His right arm swung out to compensate, until he was almost facing backwards, dangling over a twenty-foot drop. He kicked off the rock and leapt, just to get clear of it, and hit the ground in a roll that still cracked somewhere.

Monkey stood slowly, in case the racket had woken the dead. But the tunnel was silent and undisturbed, and he flicked the safety back on his staff as soon as he realized he'd released it.

He angled the flashlight up, to where there were two rungs missing, right where he'd chucked himself over the edge. The breaks were clean, like they'd been snapped right off with a good bit of effort, and Monkey swore.

He spun, searching, and from this angle could see a dip in the rock face that he hadn't noticed on his way in. It wasn't much, just a place where they hadn't dug properly, and the rock cracked and split open. But there was a light there, faint yellow-green, and the rot smell he'd sensed earlier was stronger there. Monkey's stomach clenched, in preparation for anything, and he swung the flashlight beam over.

There was a databand, half-buried in dirt and under a scrap of fabric that was a sleeve. For a stupid, unthinking moment, Monkey thought of Trip. But she didn't have a databand, and wouldn't be coming this way, and hadn't been gone long enough to end up like that. He pushed the arm out of the way with the tip of his staff, his breath stiff in his chest anyway.

The sleeve caught and rolled partway up to expose the arm, which was fairly dark with hair, and Monkey relaxed.

The man was in his mid-fifties, from what was left of the face. There was a deep crack in the side of his head, where he'd hit the ground after missing his step on the way down. Dark stains of dried blood crackled in the man's hair and along his face.

Monkey crouched near the man's legs, to see his boots. He tipped the soles toward him, and recognized the pattern that had been leading him through the tunnels so far, and had stomped designs into the dirt around the traps.

"Huh, poor bastard," Monkey said, without any feeling, and went back to the man's arm.

The databand was still flashing, and he tugged at it gingerly, remembering the patrol. The databand didn't look damaged, and Monkey thought that of all the things to land on, he'd have sacrificed his arm for his skull, if it came to that. But the man's hands didn't look like they were used to climbing through tunnels, and the fall would have surprised him. Either that, or the databand was worth saving.

Monkey pried it free, careful not to destroy this one, and flipped the databand on.

The databand had power, somehow. The screen flared on when he tried to navigate the display, and the whole damn thing went into a series of menus and boxes that popped up for brief seconds and shut down again, all in a flurry of light and color that hurt to look at.

When the light dimmed, he was looking at a wall of overlaid text that seemed even more packed with information than Trip's display ever did. It seemed vaguely like what she worked on when she made changes to his slaver band, a life ago. But if he was being fair, it all kind of looked the same. He pawed through it, to kill the light so he could keep searching without being visible by anyone within half a mile, when he sensed something behind him.

He held perfectly still until he heard it, and the noise was like a whisper of bare feet on stone, and Monkey whirled.

There was nothing there except the rocks, and the darkness of the tunnel, farther on. He clutched the databand in one hand, and reached for the staff with the other, listening.

All at once, the laughter came out of everything. It poured out of the cracks in the rock, and jagged ceiling, and the shadows where the flashlight couldn't reach. It rushed at him like smoke through the tunnel, winding up to him and hitting him hard, and Monkey turned in a full circle.

There wasn't anyone, not unless children were melting into the rock before he could see them. The laughter came from everywhere, even the man's body, crumpled and useless, and Monkey jerked away. The sound of it wasn't right. It should have bounced off the rocks until it was all reverb and no original sound. But the noise was everywhere, all at once, clear as anything.

"God damn—" he started, and stopped, as if they could hear.

The laughter snapped at him, bright and brilliant.

It was never that strong in Liberty, even when just the sight of the enslaved sent his head tipping. He reached for the slaver band, to see if it was as hot to the touch as it felt on his skull. The databand fumbled in his hand, and tumbled past the grab he made at it, a second too slow. It fell to the ground and bounced once, and the light snapped off, taking the laughter with it.

Monkey stood perfectly still for a good minute, to see if it came back, but there was only the wind in the tunnel, and the steady drip of water somewhere.

"Shit," he said, to hear his own voice, instead of the children. "_Shit_."

He crouched to pick up the databand again, and to make sure he picked it up firmly closed, in case it tired to send more noise crashing through his head. But it was silent now, so long as he didn't accidentally set it off again, and sat in his hand like nothing had ever happened.

After a minute, he ended up looping it through his belt, probably more dangerous than was smart, but he needed his hands.

There wasn't any point in going back to where the tunnel let out near the overpass, so he turned back to the ladder.

On the climb up, he stopped where the rungs were missing, to lean back and mimic falling. It worked, if he'd been trying to shield his arm. He would have thrown himself over the edge, expecting the rungs to catch him, and would have tipped forward to protect the thing on his arm, if that was the most important thing he was carrying.

He looked back to the crevice where the dead man lay, a rumple of fabric in near-darkness now, and thought for a good while before hefting himself up over the break in the rungs and back along the footprints the man had left on the way out.

He meant to walk it again, to do one last sweep for the traps the man had left. But he was listening too hard to pay much attention to anything else, and stopped every time his own footsteps didn't sound like his, and the faint rush of underground water was like distant laughter.

* * *

><p>Harold and Sophie's home was part of a large building snugly bundled between the others, an afterthought like everything else in the city. The plumbing was on the outside walls, clinging like hard silver vines, and Trip suspected that the walls had once been the insides, and only rebuilt halfway.<p>

Harold led her up a flight of stairs, and a second, before twisting down a hallway that zig-zagged in happy confusion before picking a direction. There were rows of doors on either side, and Trip couldn't imagine each one containing rooms and people, packed that close together like fitted pieces. But she could hear voices behind some of them, a few louder than they probably should have been, and she listened to the ceiling creak as someone on the floor above stomped along, going the other way.

She almost bumped into Harold when he pulled to a sudden stop and began fishing around a keyring at his belt.

"Sophie'll be home," he said, and fumbled through the mess of them. "Colt usually is. Port would be out, but she's grounded today. I never ask why. Seems safer."

"Mm," Trip said, diplomatically.

"Most people get put on a wait list of some kind," he said. "Don't know how Sophie managed it, but we got here, and got this place easy enough. I don't know how she does it. Ah!"

He found the right key and jammed it into the lock, and ushered her inside.

Their entire vehicle must have been filled to the brim, because the room was a catastrophe of towering boxes and crates. Some were open on the floor, but most were three or four deep. They were in every place she tried to step, and Trip had to stick to the walls to inch past.

"Sophie?" Harold called, and somehow got three syllables out of her name instead of two. "Port? Anyone?"

His voice boomed through the tiny space, and came back to them without answer. Harold shrugged. "Maybe in the back? Hang on."

There wasn't much of a back to speak of, but Harold thundered off that way, down a short hallway and the doors that led off it, and Trip crouched near the ribbons on the floor, folded into bows and tangled with dog fur.

"Nobody home," Harold said, and she stood guiltily. "Should be back soon."

"I really need to get going," Trip said.

"Well, who's your friend?" Harold asked. "Is he from Rider, too? When did he get in?"

Trip almost corrected him, but didn't see the need. "His name's Ben. He would have arrived a few days ago."

Harold's face pinched, like he was thinking too hard. "Would've been around the time all the mess started. Hope he didn't get involved in it."

"The thing with Lee?" Trip asked. "Is that why they stopped letting enslaved into the city?"

"Should have been checking a lot sooner," he said. "For a while, they were showing up all the time. But you know, it makes people feel safer, knowing we're not letting any more in. Us, too."

Trip's eyes still stung, and she rubbed at one with a finger, expecting anything, and was almost surprised not to find blood when she was done.

"Ah," Harold said. "Hang on. Got hit a few times myself, when they started using the smoke."

He pushed into the kitchen, enough for her to squeeze past him, and he started searching the tiny space.

"Why did they start doing that to them?"

Harold opened a drawer, pushed everything in it out of place, and shut it again. "Hm?"

"Breaking them up when they started gathering. And using the smoke like that."

"Oh. Well, when the message started," Harold rumbled. "Can't have them grouping up to listen to it. We thought they'd order more firepower, but it came down from command that they wanted just to send them home. Would make things a lot quicker, you know, if we could scare them right. They're dangerous. Sophie says it, all the time. Have to watch out for the squirts, you know?"

Trip's free hand was at the side of her head before she meant to, where they'd struck her in the street back at Liberty, and found it still ached. "They're not dangerous," she said softly.

Harold snorted. "When the doc vanished, he took the drugs with him. Or burned them, or something. Now they've got no way of getting out of their own heads, or back into them. It's a mess for the rest of us."

Trip was about to say something about it being a mess for the enslaved, too, but the front door opened before she could get to it.

A child's footsteps flitted around the mess, and Port threw herself through the doorway. If she saw Trip, she simply ignored her, and went straight to her father.

Harold scooped her up, catching her on the first try, and hoisted her high. "Hello there, rapscallion. Still grounded?"

Port kicked her feet in the air, pedaling. "Still grounded. Tell Mom it's not fair."

"Mom, it's not fair," Harold said, obediently, and Sophie sighed from the doorway.

Colt poked his head around the door, saw Trip, and vanished back down the hall.

"You could try backing me up every now and then," Sophie said, from the front door. There were two dull, heavy thuds, like she'd kicked off her shoes and thrown them.

Harold held Portia out at arm's length. "Right. So, what did you do this time?"

"Nothing."

Harold raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Port considered, and nodded, and Harold's other eyebrow went up.

"Have you seen the dog?" Sophie asked, and Trip didn't even need to see her face to guess at the weariness in her. "The entire back half of him is shaved. Where they even found—"

Harold choked on a noise that shouldn't have been a laugh, but most likely was, and lowered Portia to the ground. "My razor?"

Portia darted off.

"Yes," Sophie said. "And if that weren't bad enough, they make scrap out of my good—"

She came in to lean in the doorway, half-melted against it already, when she noticed Trip, and every muscle in her went tight.

"Soph," Harold said, carefully. "You remember Trip? She was on the road from Rider."

"I remember," Sophie said. "Why's she here?"

Somewhere down the hall, Portia found Keats, and there was a scrabble of nails on the floor as she hauled him out into the open.

"Well, she—"

"And why are _you_ here?" she asked, and Harold blinked. "You're on probation, you know? If they boot you..."

"They won't," he said, and tried to kiss her.

Sophie wasn't having it, and ducked away. "You can't keep stopping by, you know."

"You're in a mood, aren't you?" Harold said, but there was fondness in his eyes. "Right. Well, Trip was out there and got stuck in one of the veg spots, when the message came on. You didn't see it, did you?"

Sophie was quiet for a moment, then sniffed at him. "No. Is that why you smell like that?"

"Hope so. Anyway, she couldn't find her own nose, in all that, so I brought her back. I thought we might be able to help her find her friend."

There was a moment of very loaded silence from Sophie, but she finally shrugged, and Trip scraped more imagined smoke from her eyes.

"How many is that, this week?" Sophie asked.

Harold thought. "Four? Not sure. Same message, though."

"What _is_ the message?" Trip asked. "I didn't hear it. Why are they broadcasting it if..."

She stopped, because Harold was puffed up in his uniform, and Sophie's mouth went pale around the edges, pinched hard and crinkled.

"They're...not," Trip said slowly. "It's not their message, is it?"

Harold sighed in a gust of air. "Planted. You know. Someone got it into the comm system and it does that, every hour. Sends out that message off the tower."

"It's off the radio tower?" Trip asked. "How on earth—"

"Someone hacked the whole system it's on," Sophie said, and sat at the table with a soft thud. "Why do you think they're out looking?"

Trip watched her for a second, puzzled. "Who's out looking?"

"Didn't you see the patrols?" Harold asked. "And we've been in lockdown, too, since it happened. Command's not happy about it, and we've all got to suffer until they find him."

Hope like that was expensive, and Trip circled it carefully. "The patrols are out looking for whoever planted that message?"

Sophie massaged the back of her heel roughly. "What else would they be doing?"

"I thought..." Trip struggled to sound like it wouldn't be everything in the world if she'd been wrong. "The kids who've gone missing. I thought they were out looking for whoever did that."

Harold made a clucking noise in the side of his mouth. "Wish they would. Haven't heard anything about it, though, and we've got enough trouble."

They weren't out looking for Monkey now, if they had been at all. It didn't sound real, because nothing was ever handed to her just like that, simply because she'd been hoping for it hard enough. "But if they heard about someone, or got a message that someone knew who did it..."

Harold shrugged. "Dunno. Might go to command, if they had time to see it. Probably get dozens."

Sophie folded her hands in front of her at the table, and slid her fingernails under each other, searching out invisible dirt. "You should go back, shouldn't you?"

Trip was ready to go, and had been for a while, but the question had gone to Harold.

"I know," he said, and did sound guilty. "They won't miss me for a while yet."

"Still."

The radio crackled at his side, like a small patter of thunder, and Harold flipped it up, and listened for a second to the code that poured out of it.

"Gotta go," Harold said, when the code started to repeat. "There's another one, but closer to their area."

Sophie's fingers twisted together. "They should be corralled there. Just close off the sector and call it done."

Harold kissed the top of her head. "Trying, sweet. Kiss Colt for me, and Port if she'll have it."

He saluted Trip, a little clumsily, and edged back out the door. "Stick around for a bit," he said; Sophie's eyes narrowed at the seams on the table. "I'll be back soon, and we'll find your friend, right?"

Trip looked to Sophie, expecting her have something to say to that, but she stayed quiet. Harold vanished back out the door, much too fast for someone that heavy, and the sound of the door crashing sent Keats barking insanely down the hall. Portia shouted something, and the barking cut off in a whine. Colt laughed, then muffled it, then kept laughing.

Through all of it, Sophie sat, straight-backed and blind, and ignored Trip with every ounce of energy she had.

Trip edged around the table, too close to Sophie to really go unnoticed, but she didn't stir. If Mark's dragonfly hadn't arrived yet, there might still be time to intercept it. Or, if it had, there might be someone willing to listen to her, if they were busy chasing the man who left the message.

"I don't know anyone here," Sophie said suddenly, and Trip froze. "No one. I don't know where your friend is, and I don't care."

There was no feeling in her voice, and barely anything human, and Trip shrugged half-heartedly. "I figured, but Harold—"

"But Harold," Sophie said softly, meaning something else.

Trip cleared her throat. "Do you know where they take the dragonflies that get here? From the settlements?"

Sophie's eyebrows came together slightly. "No. They collect them from the towers, probably. They don't trust the radios right now."

Trip thought about Harold's radio, spewing code at him that he had only just learned, and the guard towers. She hadn't thought about it, the whole walk into the city with Toby, but she should have, and should have recognized the box he was carrying a lot sooner.

"Dragonflies," she said. "The buzzing was _dragonflies_." Sophie ignored her.

Trip was still kicking herself when Sophie hissed slowly, releasing some kind of pressure out into the air. "The radio message is calling them all out into the open, asking them to do _something_, and no one knows what. And they just let it run, and cause all this chaos."

"The message...is for the enslaved?" Trip asked. "And some stranger planted it here, right?"

"That's what they're saying."

Trip couldn't imagine it following her, and it really hadn't. It had been here all along, and she could feel his work here, like he still had his hands in everything, long after he'd moved on.

Sophie curved over farther in her chair, until her back was a tight bow. Her hands creaked in each other, but she didn't seem to feel it. "Let it take them," she said, more to herself than Trip. "Let them follow it out to nowhere."

She seemed to remember Trip, and peered at her around a mess of hair that was just starting to tangle. "Did you need something else?"

Trip didn't, but she hesitated anyway, one foot in each room. "Why do you hate them so much?"

Sophie tilted her head, like she was hearing Trip through water and had to concentrate to make it out. "They should have stayed," she said, not quite answering. "It was easier. It was just easier."

Sophie was still bent, like her hands had some force to pull her looped and aching over the table. "I wish...whoever the hell got there—" She pinched at the skin around her cheek, her temple. "I wish they'd just left them."

"And what?" Trip asked. "Just left them to die?"

Sophie's sharp eyes went to her, briefly, and came back down. "It would have been easier."

"Easier than what?" Trip demanded. "That wouldn't have been _easier_ than anything."

Sophie stood slowly. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"The hell I don't," Trip said, louder than she meant to, and the side of Sophie's mouth curled. "You don't— You don't get to _say_ that. You weren't there, were you? They'd have died like that."

"It would have been a kindness," Sophie said, cold and furious. "They hear things, see things. And if you don't believe it, you haven't been paying attention."

"I have been paying attention," Trip said, and came so close to telling her exactly who disconnected them that day, and who had to see them blink off those dreams and start the trek back across the desert. "Listen—"

Sophie whirled on her. "_You_ listen. Don't you talk to me like you understand this. Don't even pretend you've tried to talk to someone who came back, and not seen that there's nothing left in them. Do you understand?"

Trip had opened her mouth to answer, but really heard her that time. "What are you...?"

Sophie's eyes were thin slits of gray, and didn't flicker to follow her when Trip shifted back. "He promised them a cure, did you know that?"

The word didn't make sense, not for the few seconds it took Trip to figure out what she'd even said, and Keats clattered down the hall, children in tow.

He exploded into the room in a hailstorm of fur, ribbons and wide-eyed panic, and scrambled under the table.

Portia screamed and dove after him, grabbing at his hind legs and coming away with ribbons. Colt hung in the doorway, shocked and a little horrified.

"C'mere, Keats! Come — come _here_!"

Keats had other ideas, and kicked madly as Portia made a solid grab for his tail. The table lifted a few inches as she got a good grip, and Keats bucked against the table legs.

"Oh, be nice to him, Port!" Colt whined.

"You be quiet!" Portia followed Keats through the crowd of chair and table legs, and got her hands wrapped around his belly.

Sophie watched it all out of the corner of her eye. "Port, Colt, go watch vids for a bit."

Keats nipped at her, and Portia backed out from under the table, rear-end first. "But you said—"

"I know what I said!"

Portia and Colt stopped dead and stared up at her in wonder, not sure what to trust.

"_Now_," Sophie said, and the children heard steel that time and ran into the next room.

A split second later, the vidscreen blared on, and a splatter of inane noise fed into the kitchen, over the faint sound of Keats tearing ribbons from his coat.

Sophie drew a breath that didn't stop as early as it should have, and held it tight in her chest.

"What do you mean, a cure?" Trip asked, carefully.

Sophie leaned against the counter, like her own weight couldn't be trusted. "That man...was working on one. The military hired him to find one, to keep them from drugging themselves all the time, to get that noise out of their heads."

"Did he?"

Sophie gestured, at the city itself. "Does it look like it? The cure was no such thing. It made everything worse, and they were dropping dead in the streets, or close enough to it. Catatonic, a lot of them. A hundred times worse than the dreams ever were. It's hard to say who played whom."

She breathed in through her teeth for a second before continuing.

"He cut and ran, and should have. Maybe it was all a scam. The rest of them, the lucky ones, if you can call it that — they're as useless and empty as they were when they first got back, and watching them is like..."

Sophie stopped herself, and bunched her fingers together in the hem of her shirt. "It's never you. They never look at _you_. They look just over your shoulder, at something you can't see, because it isn't there."

Trip thought of the man at the fountain, singing at nothing.

Sophie showed her teeth. "You turn anyway, don't you? Just to see if you can catch it. But you can't. You weren't plugged in, like they were. And they have this whole other world in their heads. Some bright, perfect place that's going to be better than you, standing right in front of them."

Trip heard Jason in it somewhere, and her hands ached.

"But it's over," Trip said. "It's gone. Pyramid is dead. They don't need to hear it anymore."

Sophie opened and closed her hands at her sides, on nothing. "They say...voices. But not just that. Memories. Actual..._things_ that they say happened, and never did. Or, maybe a thousand years ago. I don't know."

Trip swallowed, in a jerky, painful reflex. "No. Maybe snatches of what they saw there, but it's just residual. There's no way it's that—"

"Not that real?" Sophie's voice lilted, but her face didn't change.

"They would have told me," Trip said, before she meant to, and Sophie's smile was feline and sharp.

"Why should they?" she asked. "You think, they'll leave it behind, eventually. Even if they don't drug themselves, even if they stay _here_," — she gestured, and Trip knew she wasn't indicating the room or even the city, but here, wherever the real world lay — "they're never quite looking at you, are they?"

"Even if that's true," Trip said, "that's not a good reason to hate them."

Sophie chuckled, like breaking bones in her throat. "You have to distance yourself, somehow. Either you leave, in the end, or you tell them to." She kinked a piece of hair so hard in her fingers that a few strands snapped off. "It doesn't change, and it doesn't get better."

Trip couldn't breathe, couldn't find a way to get air back into her lungs at all. "It's not like that," she said, not quite fast enough to outrun the lie.

"Then you're better than the rest of us, aren't you? You look at them, and it doesn't hurt?"

"Stop it," Trip said. "It's not like that."

"Because that'll make it better, won't it?" Sophie asked, brutally. "Don't talk about it, so it's not true. Does that work for you, really?"

Portia must have turned up the volume on the vidscreen, because some mindless, rapid-fire chatter washed over them, and she couldn't make out a word of it.

"It's not like that," Trip said again. "Hating everything is easy. It's...it's _easy_."

Sophie's mouth formed around something hostile, but she lost energy for it halfway, and turned her head aside. "I'm not having this argument with you, whoever you are, wherever you're from. Get out."

There was no negotiating the madness in Sophie's eyes, or knowing what she'd do when she found out exactly who made sure the enslaved didn't die there, in the desert.

In the next room, Portia scream-laughed, Colt a second behind her.

"Your kids aren't scarred," Trip said, slowly.

Sophie's eyes went wide and furious.

"Neither is Harold," Trip continued. "So, who...?"

"It's none of your business!" Sophie hissed.

"Whoever it is, you can't live like that! It's not— They're here! They're here, they're _home_. Why can't we just—?" But everything did hurt, it always had, somewhere under skin, and Monkey had another world buried silent and yearning in his head.

Sophie cocked her hand out, in a strangely twisted, violent gesture. "You really don't understand anything. It was easier, thinking they were dead as soon as Pyramid got them. You bury the idea of someone, and it's neat and clean and doesn't come after you at night. But this...knowing is worse. Seeing their eyes following something that isn't there, and knowing they hear things you aren't saying. It's worse."

Sophie flattened her hands against the table for balance, and her nails scraped. "You think you can get past it, or learn to ignore it. But you can't, not ever, and you find yourself wanting them dead and buried, so at least it's over."

Trip reached back to her bag, where the Cloud was, just to feel its weight against her hand. "No. You're wrong, I'd never want that."

When Sophie looked at her, there was a calm, vicious brightness in her eyes. "Then you're some kind of saint, aren't you?"

* * *

><p>Rachel was waiting for him when he got back to the grate, her back against the wall and her finger tapping some off-kilter rhythm, when she remembered to follow it.<p>

Monkey rapped the metal near her hand, and she flicked it up, like he'd grabbed her. She waited a second, to make sure the coast was clear, and an earbud dropped to her side.

"You find her?" Monkey asked.

Rachel bent down halfway, like she didn't want to be seen. "No. Everything's a mess up here and I can't get anyone to stand still for three seconds. But there's someone who I think might know, and I'm going to see him next. I just needed to make sure you're still here."

Monkey grunted, and ducked low as someone passed by.

"Take this with you," he said, when he could. "She'll need it."

He held the databand up to the grate, and Rachel's eyebrows lifted, clear up into her hair. "Where'd you get that? No one has those unless you're in the military."

"Found it," he said, and it wasn't exactly a lie. "She'll need it to get through the door."

"Huh," Rachel said. "Okay. But how're you going to get it through?"

The pattern in the grate might have accepted Rachel's hand, if she was careful, but not the databand.

"Yeah," Monkey said. "Hang on. Try not to look suspicious."

"Try not to look _what_?"

He gripped one corner of the grate, where the hinges were rusted beyond use, and pulled hard.

The sound was like tearing mechs open while they still had power, and Rachel clamped her hands over her ears, speaker and all.

The grate didn't give much, maybe four inches by the time he started feeling the fight from it clear through his fingers. He released it, and the grate hung there, a corner bent up like a scrap of paper.

"Holy _shit_," Rachel said, properly cowed.

"Here." Monkey passed the databand up to her through the gap. "Get that to Trip."

Rachel was a little slow in reaching down, but she got a grip on it, and she held the databand up to the light.

"Don't turn it on," Monkey said. "I don't know what the hell it does. Trip will. But tell her something's weird about it."

"Something weird what?" Rachel examined it from every angle. "Looks like what all the uniforms carry."

"Yeah, well, make sure it gets to her. It's your only way out."

Rachel had been considering the databand like she might have a chance of using it herself, or selling it, or any number of things, but she shoved it into her bag after that. "I'm not stupid," she said. "And it's not like we even know where the door is, anyway."

Monkey tried to measure. "About a hundred yards that way," he said, and pointed. "What's over there?"

Rachel stared off for a second, so he could only see the back of her head.

Monkey smacked his palm against the grate. "Hey, what's over—"

"The labs," she said quietly. "I can't get to the labs. Of _course_ it would be there."

"What labs?"

She tangled the speaker wire in her fingers. "I get it. No wonder no one could find it."

Monkey could hear her thinking, working things out. "You can't get through the door," he said, in case she was considering it. "Trip can. Just get that to her."

Rachel sneered, but didn't say anything.

"You're only going to get one shot," Monkey said. "You know that, right? And if you screw up, you can't get out at all."

"I got it," she said. "I don't need advice from some idiot who got stuck in a hole."

"And you're stuck in a city," Monkey pointed out. "I think we're even."

Rachel scowled, and pulled her bag over her shoulder.

"Okay?" Monkey asked. "You going to find Trip this time?"

"Yeah, I'll find her. Are you always going to say her name like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like..." Rachel made a hopeless motion with her hand, like she was used to dealing with idiots, but never found a good way to explain it to them. "Nothing."

Monkey didn't want to pursue it. "What do you need on the outside so bad? It's not safe. Someone's going to pick you right off the road."

Rachel bent down to re-tie her shoes, to block out the person who was walking past. "Me?" She sounded amused, if anything. "No way. They'd really have to try."

"Someone _is_ trying," he said.

She went still, her fingers snarled in her shoelace knot. "I know that. What the hell do you think I'm trying to get out for?"

"I have no idea."

Rachel jerked the laces, and they fluttered to the ground. "I'm going after him. I don't care if he comes to get me, because then at least I won't have to waste time looking."

"Who?" Monkey asked. But he knew, and didn't want to hear it.

"The guy who's taking the kids. The Bone Man, or whatever stupid thing they're calling him."

Monkey drew back from the grate a little, but she didn't notice.

"He took my sister," she said, without prompting. "She was there — she was _right there_, and then she wasn't. The sick bastard took her. And I don't care if it's just her—" She stopped, and Monkey knew it was because she was about to say she'd even settle for her sister's body, somewhere out there.

"You sure it was him?" Monkey asked slowly. "You sure she didn't get lost or something?"

Rachel would have hit him if she could have reached, he was sure of it. "She didn't get lost."

"_Hey_!"

Rachel shot to her feet, and Monkey threw himself down the tunnel, just far enough to be out of sight.

There were two sets of footsteps, and they stopped next to Rachel, precious few feet from the grate. "What are you doing out? It's near curfew."

Monkey heard Rachel will herself taller, older. "The hell do you care? You're not doing any good anyway."

The soldier spluttered for a second. "God, why is it always you? Go _home_. Isn't your mother sick or something?"

"She's not sick, she's in mourning."

Monkey edged forward, just enough to catch sight of the pair of boots that were far beyond any point in shining, but seemed solid enough.

"Look," the first one said. "I'm getting sick of catching you climbing shit, and trying to break into the watchtowers, and whatever else. Just...stay put, would you?"

"Let me out, and I won't bother you anymore."

"Does the word lockdown even mean anything to you?"

"No," Rachel said flatly. "Explain it to me."

"Oh for—" The soldier came closer, to peer at the grate, and Monkey retreated. "Did you do this?"

Rachel hesitated. "Yeah, so?"

"How did you even manage it? You're got, like, spaghetti arms."

There was pure, bristling rage in Rachel's voice. "I'm getting out, whether you like it or not."

"Shit, sweetheart, I'd love to get rid of you. But orders are orders. You find a way out, someone finds a way in. You want to get everyone killed?"

"_You_ can die, for all I care!"

"Well, she's charming," the other soldier said. "Look, don't let us catch you here again, and stop damaging city property. And stop showing up at dispatch. Some of us do actual work."

Rachel set herself right in front of the grate, like she was guarding it. "Don't you have other people to bother?"

"Go home," the soldier said, world-weary. "There's enough going on, and we don't have time to peel you off the fences every other day."

The soldiers turned away, and Rachel muttered after them, until the sight of their boots was gone, and the sound of them shortly after.

She dropped to the grate again, and barely ducked her head to see him. "Don't come back here," she hissed. "They'll put a patrol here now, they always do. I'll find her and get her to the door on this side. You wait on the other one."

Monkey could feel his gauntlets rusting. "I'm not going to sit around and just wait."

"Up to you," Rachel said. "But that's where we'll be. The rest of it is your problem."

"Usually is," Monkey said, but she didn't hear him, because her head was twisted away, to whatever she heard next. "How long have you been trying to get out, anyway?"

"Practically since the day I got here," she said. "They should let me right out the stupid front door, but ever since the lockdown, I can't get anywhere. But I'm going to get out, and I'm going to find him."

Monkey thought of the boy, even though he tried not to, and imagined this girl finding her sister the same way. It couldn't possibly be better than not having any answers at all, not if it meant having the image of a child weak and failing, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

"You might not want to," he said.

If Rachel got any closer to the grate, her face would be pressed flat and inhuman against it. "I'm going to tear his throat out myself, do you get that?" she said, so much older and uglier than she should have been. "I'm going to find Piper, and then I'm going to find him. I _will_, do you hear me?"

He didn't doubt it, the way her hands clawed at the stone walk, and her eyes were wild and blind at the same time. He'd seen it before, not so long ago he didn't remember gravel and hate and pain in Trip's voice.

"Yeah," he said, after Rachel finally had to blink and turn away. "I hear you."

* * *

><p>The radio tower was hard to miss, and there wasn't a single place she couldn't see it, even when she stepped out of Sophie and Harold's building. She only had to look straight up, and turn a bit to her left, and start walking. The trouble was when the streets didn't go where she expected them to, and they ended in alleys that were too crowded with dark to consider going down. She held her bag close, her hands tight on the shoulder straps, and wormed through the city, as far from the guard towers as she could get when she saw them, for reasons she couldn't quite explain.<p>

It wasn't right. None of it was right, but she couldn't find a single person in the street to explain it to. She tried to stay patient with it all, when she picked another street that looked like it should get her to the tower, but didn't, and the sun drifted toward the horizon, low and heavy. Monkey was still somewhere, probably close enough to hear her walking. But she couldn't know, no matter how hard she listened for him, and the city couldn't tell her.

There weren't any enslaved now, and Trip kept her hand tight over the band on her arm, in case the guards thought to look at it with more interest, the closer they got to nightfall. But no one gave her a second glance as she passed through, down one street and right back up it, when it led her nowhere.

Sophie's voice didn't follow her, not down any of the streets where Trip got lost and had to spin before getting trapped, and felt the city closing in on her. More than anything, Trip thought about the bend of Sophie's back, like she was holding something in until it forced a new shape on her against her will.

"Monkey," she whispered, to have his name nearby.

Miraculously, the next street was a familiar one, and the one after that. She started seeing the places she and Toby had passed, on their way through earlier that day.

And finally, as the sun blistered out over the western sky, she got back to command, where smoke still clung to the air.

The gates were still shut, ten feet high and rimmed with sharp wire. But she stalked straight past them, without looking at the building itself, or the concrete steps leading in. She kept away from the guards just inside the gate, on either side of the main door, and followed the remaining light and cluster of voices to the shorter, less aggressive building next to it, where Toby had gone.

Trip pushed through the double-doors without expecting them to be locked, and was lucky when they weren't.

There were half a dozen people in the entryway, crowded around a counter that blocked off the back part of the building. Trip stopped, to keep from running into them, and a woman waved a ticket at the man at the counter, her hand whipping back and forth.

"—been trying to send this message for _hours_!"

The man was bewildered and exhausted, and stared at the group of them over the tops of his glasses, like seeing them blurry would help somehow. "We're not accepting any more civilian transmissions at this time. We'll start taking them again tomorrow."

"But we were told, if we waited until the end of the day..."

The man glanced behind him, like he'd find reinforcements there, but there was nothing but a row of narrow screens and consoles, and turned back to her warily. "I know what you were told, but there's no way we can right now."

The woman bristled, ready for a fight, and the crowd behind her rallied silent support.

"What do you want?" someone asked, at Trip's side, and she had missed the woman coming out of the employee hallway. "We're not taking any messages, so—"

"I'm looking for Toby," she said swiftly.

The woman pulled a face Trip couldn't identify. "Toby?"

Trip pantomimed something vague, meaning the box he'd been carrying. "He brought the dragonflies from the watchtowers, right? I think one got here for me."

She shrugged. "Sure. Wingway's open, anyway. Go on back. But he's working, you got it? I don't know what he tells you all, to get you here. But don't get in the way."

"I won't," Trip said, having no idea what she'd just promised, and the woman waved her toward the doorway to her left, with a faded marker on the wall.

The door was shabby and uneven, and the hinges grated when she pushed through. But she was on the other side of the counter now, where she could see the man's hands clenched carefully at his sides.

"No more messages," he repeated, louder. "I will call security to have this room cleared if I have to."

Trip didn't hear the woman's response, and she followed the next wingway sign through another set of doors.

The buzzing hit her ears almost as soon as she rounded the corner, like someone pushing air through their teeth too rough. She came up against metal door with a window at eye level. There were lights inside, and a sickly glow of screens and LED, and she pushed inside.

The area was big enough for a row of consoles, and a glass pane leading back out to the main area, where she could just see the corner of the front desk, and the woman still talking, her hands flipping in the air.

There were dragonflies on shelves, in mesh bags, and disassembled on countertops. A few of them were plugged in and dimmed, their wings snapped back. There was a garbage bin in the corner, pieces and parts of dragonflies that hadn't survived the journey back, and Trip caught her reflection in their broken lenses.

Toby was bent over a struggling dragonfly, his whole body contorted to wrestle it into the console and still keep a finger on the controls. "Just — get — in — no, fuck it, what are you _doing_?"

The dragonfly still had full power, and swatted at him with its wings. Its lens shifted in and out, considering Toby's fingers and looking for a way to break them.

"Can I help?" Trip asked, and Toby let go of the controls to grab the dragonfly with both hands in surprise.

"Shit!" he hissed, as the dragonfly's wings sliced through a fingertip. "Could you push that?"

Trip considered the console briefly. "You don't even have the dock primed."

"I know what I'm doing," Toby said. "Push the activation — top corner?"

"I would, except that won't let you connect it."

Toby gripped the dragonfly as hard as he could without cracking its shell. "Who the fuck are— Okay, right. Push whatever the hell you want. It's not like I work here or anything."

Trip's fingers wanted every button at the same time. She flipped off the safety Toby had tripped, and had the dock primed in a few swipes.

"Great," Toby said. "Top corner, please."'

She let her finger rest on the pulsing button near the bottom of the screen, but didn't push down. "Tell me about what's happening with the enslaved."

"What?" Toby's grip on the dragonfly slipped, and its shell nicked at his hands. "Ow! Are you insane? Just push it!"

Blood ran down Toby's hand, into the inside of his wrist and down, but Trip didn't move. "Why are they talking about a cure?"

Toby tried to bundle his sleeve around the dragonfly, but it only tangled and shredded. "What do you care about the veg, anyway?"

She didn't know this boy, but his sneer was Harold's, was the guards', and he used the word one time too many, and Trip waited.

Toby twisted the dragonfly away from him. "God, fine, I would have told you anyway. Would you just—"

The dragonfly was mid-jacknife in his hands, its wings spiking toward his eyes, and Trip punched the release.

The dock flipped up, and Toby snapped the dragonfly's lens into place and shoved it onto the prongs. For a second, its wings thrummed at its sides madly, but the motion eventually died down, and data began to pour across the screen.

A minute passed as Toby massaged his hands, beads of blood dripping down his fingers like candle wax.

"The enslaved," Trip said. "What's going on here?"

Toby shrugged in a jerky, nervous motion. "What do you want to know? They're everywhere, aren't they? They came back from Pyramid, and left that backwards town after a while. Some broke off, came straight here."

People had left, back in the beginning, to go home. She never heard the word Granville, but she hadn't really been listening. "Okay. But what was the cure Lee was working on for the military?"

"For the..." Toby stared at her. "Who told you that?"

"You told me."

She matched his gaze, but Toby shook his head. "No, the hell I didn't. I never said they hired him. Who told you?"

"I don't remember."

He tried to stare her down, but blinked after a second, and deflated completely. "No one's supposed to _know_ that," he said, and mussed with his hair. "Fuck. Whatever. I don't even— Look, they didn't want anyone on the drugs anymore, so they had him working on some way to reprogram them, so they could shut down the dream-house."

"Reprogram them?"

Toby tipped his chin. "What would you call it?"

She would call it that, if she was being honest. "So Lee was working on a way to...undo what Pyramid did to them?"

"I guess so," Toby said sullenly. "But he ran on us, didn't he? And he screwed a bunch of them up, worse than they were before."

Trip played with the console for a second, thinking. "So where is he? What does the message have to do with it?"

"The message? Nothing. Dr. Lee just vanished. Some think the veg took him, for meddling with their heads or something. But most of us think he couldn't do what he said, and chickened out and ran. Easier than facing Dallas, I guess."

"The message, though?"

Toby snorted. "Some veg sympathizer bullshit."

The entire scheme sounded more and more like Jason every second. "What is it, exactly? What's it telling them?"

"Can't tell you," Toby said. "Don't have a copy."

"You don't know what it is?"

Toby pointed at his head, where he would have had slaver scars, but didn't. "You think I need to hear that crap? Not my problem."

"So Lee vanished, and then someone hacked into your radio system and planted a message for the enslaved—"

"Who _calls_ them that?" Toby whined.

"—and the man who planted it is...out there, somewhere? They're searching for him?"

"Well, yeah."

Trip folded her hands, her fingers zipped together. The timeline wasn't quite right, but it was close. "Do you have any pictures of him?"

"Of the fugitive? Sure, there's the security feed. They were pushing it out to the vidscreens for a while, but we're not sure how far the hack spread, so..."

"Where is it?"

Toby gestured at his console, and Trip stood to let him to it. "Are there any other ways out of the city that Lee might have used?" she asked, thinking of Monkey's way in.

Toby started flipping through the screens. "I don't know. You should ask Rachel. It's totally her thing."

"Who's that?"

Toby selected an entry on the console, considered it, and flicked past. "She should be here soon. She always shows up. If anyone knows if there's a secret way out, it's her."

Trip settled against the consoles, her finger between her teeth. "Toby, did you get any dragonflies from Liberty lately?"

"Command's been grabbing all the dragonflies from the settlements as soon as we scan them. Don't know why they bother with Liberty at all. It's all batshit out of there, anyway."

She ignored that. "Okay, but if I needed to find out—"

"There," Toby said. "That's all I've got for you. Just watch it and go, would you?"

He stood, and Trip bent over the screen.

Toby made an irritated sound in the back of his throat, and she looked back up before the video could start. The glass was just thick enough to muffle the shouting into a blur of rage, but it still sent the hairs on the back of her neck straight up. She pressed close to the glass to see the front desk, squinting.

"Dallas's here," Toby said, dourly.

The civilian crowd had cleared out, and there was a woman in uniform behind the counter, near the consoles in the main area. The man stood in front of her, his back to them, but he was leaning at a crazy angle, away from her fury.

"She's been pissed ever since the hack," Toby said, a little obviously. "We're doing all we can to get rid of it, but..." He shrugged. "Whatever. She doesn't get it. She's all, shut it all down, and we try to tell her it doesn't work like that. What, shut the whole system down? All of it? It's crazy."

"Wait, that's Dallas?" She wore the same uniform as the rest of them, and her hair was flattened against her forehead under a crisp military beret.

Toby's mouth went sideways. "Yeah. Stay out of her way, though."

"She might know about—"

"Does that look like a good mood to you?" Toby asked, as Dallas only shifted her weight forward, and the man in front of her leapt back.

Trip watched for a second more, and went back to the console. She brushed past the feed Toby had brought up, and started typing.

Toby craned his neck to see. "For the love of— What are you doing now? You're going to get me in so much shit. Rachel doesn't even touch the consoles when she's here, and she gets into fucking everything."

"Shut up a sec," Trip said. The command line snapped open, and she stared at it for a second. "When did the message start?"

"I dunno. A week ago?"

She filtered through it, all the changes made during that time, and drilled down until she had something usable. Toby watched in growing panic as she hit the authentication at a blind run, and dodged around it.

"You're so going to get me fired," Toby said. "What're you looking for?"

"The timestamp from when the message was dumped into your system," Trip said, without stopping. "If we can find that, we can figure...out..."

"Figure out what?"

There was an explosion of new commands in that time frame, and a host of processes that had been altered at the same time. "What _is_ this?" she asked, largely to herself.

"Heck if I know," Toby said anyway. "Ask the guy who put it there. Dallas thinks he made it outside, but that's crazy. If he's here, he's with the veg, because they're the only ones nuts enough to hide him." Toby reached past her, and the code winked out. "You're going to get me in so much shit," he hissed. "I was lucky to get this job, you know?"

The camera feed was back, and Trip stared for a long second at the back of the man's head, blurry and anonymous in the frame. It didn't look like Jason, but it could have been something simple, some disguise he was wearing. "Where is this from?"

"I told you, security cam at command."

Trip advanced through the frames, until the man started to turn, to argue with someone at his side.

"He ran," Toby said. "They got this of him, but he ran, and knocked a few guards out, and escaped into the city."

"And you're really not hunting the Bone Man, are you?" she asked, dully.

"The psycho taking the kids? We got fifteen reports about that last week alone. Heck, some people are reporting neighbors they don't like, just to get rid of them."

Trip had time. Not much, but a little, and it would keep Monkey safe a while longer. She kept keying through the frames, waiting for the man to turn, and to finally become Jason.

"There, see?" Toby asked, and pointed in front of her. "He's not even a veg. So fucking weird."

By the time the feed had almost finished, the man had turned close enough to the camera for Trip to see his profile, and she kicked the chair back when she stood.

"They only had the camera rigged because we got the warning he was coming, you know?" Toby asked, somehow ignoring the fact that Trip was standing ramrod straight, her hands rigid on the controls. "They're shitty cameras, anyway. At that resolution, it could be anyone. Dunno what the hell they think anyone'll find."

But Trip flattened her knuckle against her front teeth until she tasted salt and iron, and pushed her other finger toward the screen, over the man's face.

"What do you mean, you got warning?" she asked.

"Didn't I already say? We got a dragonfly a couple of weeks ago that this veg sympathizer would show up. Sure enough, he does, and the message starts up."

Trip's finger went right through the display, the lines rippling wildly where she touched. But when they reformed, the image was the same, grainy and monochrome from the security feed that would have looked like anyone who didn't know him. But the longer Trip watched, the worse the weight in her grew. Somewhere off-camera, there was an argument going on, and an elbow just in the frame that was part of a punch flying by. But the man in the middle of the frame was just turning, his face startled and angry, clearer in the frame after that, and the one after that.

Trip watched until the camera feed reached the end of what was useful, and the image of Ben stared straight at the camera, his arm half-up and warding off someone coming from his side.

Everything in her chest stopped working, and Trip had to breathe, had to tell herself to, while Toby watched with growing suspicion.

Trip rallied one calming breath. "You said, the enslaved sector, if he was anywhere?" she asked.

"Do you know him?" Toby asked, incredulous. "You have to tell command, if you do."

Trip could almost hear Ben's voice through the security feed, imagining the moment they tried to arrest him. "Where are all the enslaved?"

"Do you know him?" Toby repeated, slow and deliberate. "You can't just head out looking."

"_Tell me_."

Toby folded his arms over his chest. "Forget it."

Trip suddenly had him backed up against the console when he wasn't expecting it, and he was stuck between her and the dragonflies that eyed him with interest, their wings flickering.

"Oh, right. What're you going to do?" he asked, as Trip realized she didn't quite know. He really was taller, and if it came to it, he'd push past her. But his eyes flickered over her when he asked it, and she wasn't sure he'd have the guts to try.

She drew away, and was back at the console before he could stop her.

"What are you doing now?" he demanded. "You know what, forget it. I'm calling security."

She barely thought about the code, but made sure he saw every letter of it as she typed it in. "You do that. I'll wipe your entire datastore before they get here."

There was a brief flash of fear in Toby's eyes, but he shrugged at her. "I've got everything backed up. You ever heard of redundancy?"

Trip held his gaze. "You don't have the resources for daily backups. You'll lose everything from the past...three weeks, looks like."

Toby's mouth gulped at air, and Trip waited, her finger over the confirmation.

The room was a thin buzz of angry dragonflies, and Toby spent a long time calculating, running through everything he'd done in the last few weeks, and his face darkened.

"Well?" Trip asked. "I swear I will, and you're not smart enough to rebuild it all before someone notices."

Toby's jaw tightened. "...What do you want?"

"Where are the enslaved?"

"Northeast," he said, tonelessly. "But it's gated off after curfew anyway. All the sectors are."

"Why are they in another sector at all?" Trip said, and almost pushed the button anyway. "Who gave you the right to put them—"

"Not us," Toby interrupted angrily. "They put themselves there, because it's near the dream-house. Or it was, before it got shut down. They don't want anything to do with us, and it's mutual."

Trip waited a second longer, until Toby was almost twitching, his hands jerking up like he was searching for the controls.

She turned and yanked the door open, and Toby was shouting for help as she went crashing through the double-doors to the outside.

It was well into dusk now, and the square looked alien and lifeless. Trip heard a door slam somewhere behind her, and she leapt down the few steps out of the building, and cracked shoulders with someone shorter coming up the other way.

The girl almost toppled over. "_Oof_! Watch where you're going!"

Trip righted, and kept running, away from the building and the noise that was growing in it. The girl shouted something else, but Trip was in front of the command building now, where the gates were still locked, and she had to get away from all the lights.

She dove down the first side street she saw, and the next when that one ran out. She kept to all the shadows that might lead her in the right direction, as close to northeast as she could manage, and ran until the stitch in her side was an open wound across her ribs, and kept going even then.


End file.
